Piazza Santa Croce y Basilica

Our accommodation was halfway between Florence and Bologna. We had a hard time deciding which city to spend the afternoon in as we leave for Croatia tomorrow. It turned out that Viv and Kez were enroute to Florence the very same day! This was actually unplanned. Despite having said our goodbyes in Positano a few days earlier, we decided to have dinner with them one last time in Italy.

Everyone was pretty spent from driving/taking the train/sleeping in the car. We decided that this evening would be spent at an idyllic pace, doing things that everyone REALLY wanted to do, like shopping for a leather jacket! Haha. Aaron’s so thrilled!

It turns out, Viv is quite well-versed in the art of differentiating good leather from bad leather. It’s all in the stitching, she says. The salesmen could sniff out an unsuspecting victim. One salesman demonstrated that a particular leather jacket that Flora was trying on was of supreme quality as it did not burn when he tried to set it alight with his lighter. Oldest trick in the book, Viv says. She saved Flora from the jaws of a wily old fox.

We didn’t just look at leather jackets. We saw the Duomo (or Il Duomo di Firenze as the locals call it) in the heart of Florence’s Old Town. Once again, we were gobsmacked by what’s in front of us. The exterior had recently undergone a careful clean (water-blasted) to reveal its original splendour. You can tell a marked difference between the sections that had been cleaned and ones that hadn’t.

We walked around Old Town until it was dinner time at a local favourite. We’ve heard a lot about the Florentine steaks. It did not disappoint. 1kg of T-bone steak was devoured in a matter of minutes by the two of us. Viv and Kez were less carnivorous than us. It was the perfect way to end our time together in Italy. For real this time! Viv and Kez will carry on with their adventures in Cinque Terre and Venice before concluding their Italy trip.Read more