On the last day of our honeymoon, we took it a little easy. We woke up and had the hotel breakfast. We then made our way over to the small Accademia Museum which houses Michaelangelo’s original David sculpture.There were no photos allowed in this museum. We were pleasantly surprised not to have to wait in a long line -- we’d been told it can be really bad. We had a Rick Steves audio guide of this site, which we enjoyed. During the audio guide, we learned a good bit about the David statue. To be honest, I had always wondered what the big deal was. This helped me to put it into perspective, though I still may not 100% understand the hype. There was also a really interesting exhibit as you walk down a corridor that leads to David that shows a bunch of Michaelangelo’s unfinished sculptures in various stages. Some of them look mostly like giant chunks of rock with only the roughest shape of a person coming through, and then down the line they become more evolved. It’s an interesting insight into the process of the rock “coming alive” by the artist. They’re all unpolished so you can see every chisel mark intact.
Once we left the Accademia we stopped to get a snack at a small pizza place.
We shared a slice of pizza (this is what they call a slice) and a ham and cheese calzone. They were both really good!
Soon it was time to meet our guide for one final tour, this time of the Uffizi Gallery. Our guide was nice and very informative. She was half Italian and half British and had an interesting accent. There was a couple on our tour who were American but were teaching English as a second language in Moscow, Russia, so Ilya talked to them about that a bit and showed off his Russian skills. We saw a lot of paintings on this tour and learned a lot of history. I would definitely recommend a guided tour of this place. There was a large window in a hallway of the gallery with a great view that people are encouraged to take pictures of. Ilya got this shot of the Ponte Vecchio:
Towards the end of our tour, the guide started talking about how in 90 minutes there was another tour that she was giving that about half of our group, but not us, were signed up for. A distinguished older couple asked the guide what was the best gelato place between the gallery and their next meeting spot. She very excitedly answered that the Gelateria Perche No! (translation: Why not?) was her favorite by far and raved for a minute about the best flavors. She described where it was to the couple, and even drew on their map how to get there from where we were. Ilya leaned in to look, because we had been planning to get some gelato when we left the tour, and wanted to take the recommendation of this local guide. Once we got outside, I asked him to direct us to the gelato place, and he admitted he had no idea how to get to it. We spotted the distinguished old couple walking ahead, map in hands, and we decided to follow them. Ilya made no effort to “play it cool” and keep a distance, but I hung back so it wasn’t 100% obvious that we were following them. It didn’t take long for it to become completely obvious that this couple also had no clue where they were going. They would take about 20 steps, stop to stare at their map, repeat. Eventually the woman stood at a corner to wait while her husband took off in search of gelato. I remembered hearing the guide say that it was by “the old grain mill church” which I knew meant the Orsanmichele church that we had been inside of a few days earlier, and we knew exactly where that was. So, we decided to ditch the old couple and take off to the church which was about 2 blocks away, and search in that immediate area for the coveted gelato shop. We found it right away, and toyed with the idea of running back to find the couple and show them where it was, but we were too shy and lazy to do that. We decided to walk back to the main square to sit and enjoy our cones. On the way there, we spotted the old couple once again, this time with gelato from someplace else! We felt a little guilty for not telling them before they gave up, and in order to avoid them recognizing us and asking if we found the place the guide talked about, we took a detour around the block to avoid them. It was a very Seinfeld-esque situation and we had quite a giggle about it. Here we are enjoying our hard-earned treats by the Palazzo Vecchio:
We walked around a bit as the sun set. Here is a shot of Ilya near the Ponte Vecchio:
Ilya took this candid, emo picture of me hanging out while he was across the street to use the ATM:
It was too early to eat dinner, but we were a little bored of walking around, so we decided to go back to the hotel to relax and pack for a bit before dinner. When we arrived in our room, there was a complimentary bottle of champagne waiting for us on ice. We had a little impromtu party with Beary and Lionel on our balcony:
At one point Ilya had gone back into the room for something, and this is the candid shot I got of him coming back out after I summoned him with champagne-induced silly noises:
Champagne makes everything great!
After this, we headed out for dinner. We decided on the Trattoria Lo Stracotto on the recommendation of our guidebook. It was a great least meal! They also had one of the nicest bathrooms we saw in all of Italy. We got a cheesey sausagey appetizer that was delicious. For my entree I got pasta with pumpkin and sage:
We can’t remember exactly what Ilya’s dish was, but it was very meaty and delicious:
That’s it for pictures! After this we walked around a bit more to soak up the city as much as we could before heading home. We hung out people watching in a busy square, with street performers playing music. We even briefly tried to dance some of our new moves that our friend Alex taught us for our wedding dance. Each night as we had been strolling around the streets, we eyed up these places that sold waffles fresh off the press with nutella spread on them. We kept saying we’d get one at some point, and this had to be the night! Ilya ran and got us one and we devoured it in about 30 seconds in the square. It was delicious! With sticky nutella fingers, we started walking back to our hotel to call it a night. I decided we needed one final gelato before leaving Italy, so we stopped to get one before we eventually went to bed. I think I slept possibly around 3 hours, but mostly tossed and turned. I was SO excited to get home! We had to get up a little before 5 to get a cab to the airport. We flew from Florence to Rome, which took about an hour. We got a snack in the Rome airport and finally boarded our flight to the JFK airport. I stayed awake the whole flight, partially because it was daytime and also, every time I try to sleep on a plane I wake up groggier than I was before, and with a sore neck. We entertained ourselves with movies, books, and games. The in-flight meal was a big diversion; the food on Alitalia is surprisingly pretty good. We enjoyed watching the interactions with this cute older couple who were sitting a few rows apart from each other, one behind us, one in front of us. Apparently the woman was pretty clueless and the man was very cute about taking care of her. As the flight crew was coming down the aisle letting everyone know their choices in Italian, this man made sure to make his way to tap his napping wife on the shoulder and whisper loudly, “It’s CHICKEN!”. It was really cute. We still repeat it to each other whenever we eat chicken. A little while later, as I was leaving one of the bathrooms, I saw him giving her a tutorial on how to lock the bathroom door. It must not have stuck, because once Ilya returned from the bathroom, I told him what I saw and he said “Oh, I guess that’s who I just almost walked in on.”
Once the flight FINALLY ended, we got our suitcases and took the subway into Manhattan to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and then a bus to a few miles away from our house. Ilya’s dad picked us up where we got off the bus, and that was the last leg of our 24 hour journey home. We were deliriously tired. Our house was 61 degrees because the pilot light went out on the furnace, but we were SO happy to be home, and Jackie-cat was so happy to see us. She didn’t let us out of her sight for a while. We spent the next few days recovering from jet lag and putting away our wedding gifts. We used as many of our new kitchen appliances as we could, and we especially had fun finding ways to use up all the apples that we ended up with, left over from our wedding centerpieces.
I hope you all enjoyed my honeymoon stories! I am so glad I will always have this blog to look to for all the little details that I will definitely be forgetting before our first anniversary. I hope some people find it helpful in planning their own trip. Thanks to Ilya for putting in the majority of the effort for researching, planning, and booking this trip of a lifetime, as well as proofreading all my posts and helping me remember some details. What a guy!
