Florence with Andy! Part 1.

Day One:

After departing Castiglion Fiorentino for the last time on this trip, anyway, I hopped aboard my train to Florence, knowing that Andy would be waiting for me there, and he was.  Six weeks of waiting seemed to disappear as I welcomed him to Italy with a hug and kisses aplenty.  Our first course of action was to find our hotel, the Hotel Sampaoli.  We had directions but had neglected to have a map.  Despite this, we found it with little trouble, situated on the fourth floor of a row of buildings, just north of San Lorenzo (and its famous market) and the Medici Palace, directly over a Greek Restaurant. 

We rang the bell, heard the door click, and entered.  We were greeted in a minute or two by the man running the establishment who offered to help us with our bags and lead us up the stairs. The only complaint we could have lodged about our room was its location, literally opening on the lobby and its traffic, but the room itself was of a reasonable size, had a decent bathroom, a window, and a very large fan.  No AC but that's not uncommon and the fan did much to cool the room.

Me on the bed in Hotel #1, Sampaoli in Florence.

Nice people, decent location, no AC.

After resting for a bit, we headed out in search of lunch.  I took Andy to the small panini shop I'd been to on two of my previous visits to Florence and enjoyed their panini while walking around.  I took Andy past many of the notable spots including the Duomo, Orsanmichele, San Lorenzo, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Uffizi, and the Ponte Vecchio.  At the Palazzo Vecchio I gave Andy a informal version of my presentation about the statue of Perseus and Medusa.  We also hunted down the restaurant we had reservations to dine at the following evening, the Quatre Lione, which had been recommended by the neighbors we'd recently acquired back in Austin.  Past the ponte and a right at a book shop and there it was in a small piazza.

We headed back towards the hotel, stopping to grab a gelato at Grom on the way (strawberry and lemon for both of us) and took a stroll through the San Lorenzo Market, as Andy was tired from his flight.  Apparently, there'd been a group of teens on the flight who didn't ever shut up and sleep, so he wasn't able to get any sleep on the flight.  While he napped, I played on the computer and looked up the train schedule for our departure to the Cinque Terre and the hours of the Galileo Museum.

Strawberry and Lemon Gelato from GROM Florence

For dinner we went to a spot recommended by the hotel (there are only two they recommend, the second being the Quatre Lione) called Za Za.  The outside seemed loud and full, so we opted to sit inside and were lead to our choice of tables by a very perky Japanese girl.  It seemed that the place had a lot of front-of-house Japanese people, actually, which I found rather odd.  I had Tagliatelli (the really wide noodles) in boar sauce, grilled chicken with roasted potatoes, and a salad.  Andy had Pici with pesto sauce, a mixed grill platter with chicken, beef, lamb and a pork sausage with roasted potatoes, and a salad.  We tried a house white wine with it, and Andy followed it all with his first Italian coffee (which he's now addicted to because they don't make him as "hot" as a full cup of coffee would).

Dinner was followed by a slow stroll around Florence, enjoying the cooler air of the evening and the lessened crowds.  We walked towards the Ponte Vecchio and saw all the jewelry shops closed up for the night with their beautiful wood coverings in place to protect the glass and jewelry inside and took photos of the Arno with the lights reflecting off it from the buildings along the banks which, since I didn't have my camera at the time, we decided to return the following evening to get better shots.