Caffe Gilli. Oh, how I miss Caffe Gilli. On Thursday, our last day in Florence, we ventured away from Hotel Pendini for breakfast. We'd admired Caffe Gilli in Piazza della Repubblica from afar. Up close, it was darling. From the marble countertop bar where we sipped our cappuccinos and shamelessly ate more than our share of breakfast pastries, to the elegant workers behind the counter - the entire Caffe is a little jewel frozen in time. It's been there since 1733! Hats off to any establishment that has been around that long.
From there we walked to the Galleria dell'Accademia to pay a visit to an ancient, tall naked man ... also known as David ;-) Yet again, I was happy we purchased Firenzecards to bypass the long general line. Inside the Galleria, the Hall of the Prisoners lead the way to David. Those prisoner sculptures that protrude unfinished from stone are pretty thought-provoking. It makes you appreciate a finished sculpture that much more when you see the original material from where it came. One of Michelangelo's Pieta sculptures was at the end of the row, also not completely finished seeming, but beautiful in that way. David is breathtaking up close. I mean, it's so larger than life. How a person could fathom creating something like that, chiseling it from stone - it's beyond my understanding.
We then headed toward San Lorenzo Market. Food, leather - what's not to love. The food component, Mercato Centrale, is a large indoor market of fresh ingredients as well as awesome food vendors on the upper level. I could have happily eaten my way through that entire market :)
Back outside, we browsed stall after stall of beautiful leather. I landed on a cream cross-body purse, and in chatting with the stall's owner, I asked where we could find a leather hide for Jonathan to use to make items of our own. He directed us to someone he knew a few stalls down, who then walked us into his shop where he had several beautiful hides. We chatted for a bit to get a sense of the price he had in mind, if he was even willing to part with it. Jonathan eventually decided to go for the entire hide and the shop owners were friendly enough to even let him pick out some hardware free of charge. The whole interaction was one of my favorites from our time in Florence -- speaking Italian with a leatherworker and explaining and showing the leatherwork that Jonathan makes. When we left, the owner told us to make him a wallet and mail it to him ;-)
Later that afternoon our theme of leather continued as we visited the Scuola del Cuoio next to the Basilica of Santa Croce. It was neat because we got a partial tour of the leather school by the founder's granddaughter. The school was founded by a man who was approached by monks to create a school that taught orphans a trade for them to earn a living. His daughters have since taken over the school and run it today.
In the evening, my aunt and uncle drove us to the nearby town of Lucca. We ate dinner and strolled through the quiet streets before heading back to Florence. Not before we staged a photo so I could cover up one of the Cs in Lucca for our nephew ;-)
