We had originally planned to go to the Boboli Gardens but since it was raining, we spent the morning doing nothing as far as I can remember. We did go out to have lunch and had a tasty meal of beef tripe from a roadside stall near the Mercato. The stall had 2 students (I think) who were taking photos of the owners preparing the meal. There was a sign at the stall written in Chinese telling Taiwanese tourists that the beef tripe was a must try. I must say the beef tripe was good, spicy and comforting in the cold weather.
After that, we walked onto the Piazzale Michelangelo. Though it was a rainy and dreary day, the walk was worth it. The view was really worth it and they had bronze David too!
View from Pizzale Michelanglo
The view was actually taken the next day when it was nice and sunny. And that concludes our Florence journey, there were some places we didn’t go which on second thoughts would have been nice to visit like Santa Croce which has Michelangelo’s tomb and of course the gardens which we didn’t go cos it was raining. Oh well, we can always come back I guess.
After Florence, we drove off to Tuscany, specifically San Gimignano. It’s a nice little town which is considered ‘the medieval Manhattan’ of its time. We didn’t stay in the town itself, instead we chose this apartment on the outskirts of town. It’s managed by a lovely Italian couple who could easily be our grandparents! They spoke no English and we spoke no Italian but somehow we managed to communicate. They were really nice and gave us a bottle of recently harvested olive oil (40days) when we left. CS wanted to see the harvesting of olives and the production of olive oil but apparently it’s not the season to do so, so we made do with eating olive oil instead. But we did learn a bit of knowledge such as: there are 3 types of olives that produce olive oil but only 1 survives the winter to be harvested sometime in early January.
We spent one day walking around the town of San Gimignano and it’s like a movie set! I can almost imagine the cast of Merlin or Robin Hood around, lol… There was a wedding going on though we didn’t actually see the wedding we did see the guests and the confetti they left behind. It is quite a nice place to hold a wedding if you have the money to spare, all the wedding photos will definitely look fabulous.
San Gimignano
There was a town nearby where New Moon was shot, V you should totally check it out if you come to Italy, haha… The previous occupants of the apartment had left the brochure of the New Moon tour in the room so that’s how we got to know about it. In case anyone needs to know the town is Volterra. Since I’m not a fan, we didn’t check it out and just spent our time in San Gimignano. It is a really nice little town to just chill and relax and that's what we did :)
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