February 18, 2023 - Palazzo Medici Riccardi

We started the day by visiting the Palazzo Riccardi Medici museum. It was fun to be able to see the villa which we had seen on the Netflix series Lorenzo Medici the Magnificent. It gave a bit more context to what we were seeing. We have decided that when we return we will watch the series again.

Jacques taking a selfie

Lots of fancy chandeliers

San Ambrogio church on our way to the market.

Afterward we proceeded to the Mercato San Ambrogio market which is where the locals shop along with better prices. We also ate lunch at a small restaurant in the market. They put the bottle of wine on the table, and you serve yourself at the end of the meal he eyeballs it and tells you how much it cost. We had 2 glasses each for a total of 6 euros. A pretty good deal. Rollande had Ribollita Soup and Jacques had Spaghetti with seafood. We finished that off with Panna Cotta for Rollande and Tiramisu for Jacques. The Tiramisu was the better of the two.

We bought parmesan for tonight’s pasta, speck and bresaola. The wine, pasta and sauce as well as a mache salad was bought yesterday but we were not hungry enough to make a meal last night. We also bought nice mandarins at $1 a lb. There seems to be a bit of different pricing for tourists and locals. We had to go twice for a grocery card and with the card the savings are substantial. For example last night’s grocery was 19 euros with almost 9 euros saved by using the card.

Before coming home to bring our supplies we stopped to get the sim cards for our phones. With the cards in we get new phone numbers. We will send them to family members during the weekend.

After a brief rest we decided to go explore around our neighborhood. We have been crossing the river everyday to go to the city center but it is time to see what our own neighborhood has to offer. We saw plenty of bars, restaurants and all sorts of small stores. The closer we walked towards Ponte Vecchio and palazzo Pitti the more expensive the menus became. We will stick closer to home when we want to eat out. Our Airbnb host gave us a list of suggestions for restaurants and also where the different grocery stores are. So far we have been shopping at Conad which is just around the block they are as popular here as Sobeys and Superstore at home. There is a much bigger grocery store about 20 minutes away. We might go for a look tomorrow afternoon.

We did another stop for gelato. Jacques had the pistachio and ricotta clementine and I had the pistachio and dark chocolate. We had a good laugh watching a young boy about age 3 eating his gelato from a cone. His face was covered with chocolate and when he started eating from the bottom of the cone his hands were also covered. We offered the few napkins that we had but it didn’t come close to cleaning the mess. Fortunately his mother had a couple of wet napkins to wipe the majority.

Petti Palace