across the Arno

Yesterday we went for a walk and visited the Ponte Vecchio. I was going to blog last night but it takes a while to upload pictures and I got tired.

Florence is divided in half by the Arno river. The Ponte Vecchio is a bridge lined with shops. It first appears in literature dated 996 but is thought to have existed long before that. It got destroyed by floods twice and was rebuilt for the last time in the mid-1300's. This was the only one out of Florence's six bridges that survived the German bombings of WWII.

We walked past the Ponte Vecchio and crossed on another bridge, ate dinner on the other side of the river, and then walked back on the Ponte Vecchio. By then, most of the shops were closed. They were boarded up with neat medieval-looking doors and shutters.

Dinner was our best Italian meal yet. If the food gets any better than this place I don't know what I'm going to do with myself, because it's hard to imagine that it could get better. In Italy, you have two courses (at least), but it's not really any more food than you get in the USA. They just separate your pasta and chicken, for example. Last night I had spaghetti alla carbonara (spaghetti tossed with egg - not pieces, but in the sauce, bacon, cheese and cream) and then chicken with a tomato cream sauce. It was fabulous. The other girls' meals were great as well. We sat on the patio ($4 per person cover charge to do so, $2 each to eat in the restaurant) and it was well worth it. I think that's when it started to hit us - that we're really here. It's been so surreal, like living on a sound stage or a Vegas casino (everything's so cute and close together but not real). We sat, over looking the Arno and next to the Ponte Vecchio, eating great typical Tuscan cuisine, and had a great time.

Last night I had my first gelato - strawberry. It was good, but not stunningly delicious. We'll keep looking for a better place...we passed a lot of cafeteria-style eateries (one is pictured below) that had cheap food, much cheaper than the places we've been eating at. It's all been good, but some of it hasn't been worth what we've been paying (with the restaurant last night as the exception). Time to go grocery shopping (our task today) and find less expensive meal options.

Here are some photos from yesterday: