Day 4

The next day was a day off in the sense that we did not have anything planned in advance. So after eating breakfast, we headed out to go to the Santa Maria Novella church. Here there were no pictures allowed at all, so you get none to see. There were basically a lot of old and very large paintings, of a religious persuasion. No surprise there.

After that, we walked around trying to find the Cappelle Medici (The Medici Chapels) and more specifically the museum attached. I have seen relics before, but in most cases, the relic itself is a teeny tiny piece of bone, no larger than a large snowflake. However, the relics here were often entire bones (hand or foot bones, presumably - at least they weren't femurs), extracted from the dead. I thought to myself: this is how I want to be memorialized. Again, I think we weren't allowed to take pictures, but I'm not sure I would have wanted to even if we could. Above the relic room was a large chapel with 6 of the more important Medici members entombed in enormous marble caskets. In fact, the entire room was made out of all different kinds of marble; it was amazing. Unfortunately, the room was in the process of being cleaned, so we weren't able to get the full effect, but nonetheless it was impressive.

Looking at all those bones really worked up our appetites, so we then headed over to the indoor market to look around and get some food for lunch. If you've ever wanted to see a skinned rabbit sliced into halves lengthwise, this is the destination for you. In addition to meats of all kinds (including tripe, I think) there were breads, fruits, pastas, candy, and lots of porcini mushrooms. I have never seen a larger pile of fungi in my life.



We got some bread and dried fruit to eat for lunch, and then went back towards the hotel to eat it. After lunch, we went out to do some souvenir shopping. I don't that we did anything else substantial in terms of tourism, though we did stop by the Piazza Della Repubblica to look at the statues. Here is a picture of the David which is in said Piazza. Note that this is not the real David. Also note: NSFWIYBIAUT!



After getting all our shopping done, we went out to a nice dinner at a restaurant whose name now I can't remember. But it was good. Expensive, but good (we felt compelled to a) order a bottle of wine and b) order firsti, secondi, and desserti). When we got back to the hotel, mi esposa fell asleep while I watched snooker on ESPN Euro (or whatever it's called). Snooker is quite addicting to watch, in case you didn't know.

Day 5: Wine tasting!