The next morning in Florence, we went to the Medici Chapels, just a short walk from our apartment. This was created by the Medici to serve as the family crypt, and contains the tombs of the greatest of their rulers.
Because this is Florence, there are also random Michelangelo things in there. This is one of his sculptures, unique in style compared with his other work.
Many of the tombs were his sculptures as well. There were hardly any people here, mostly just a class of drawing students. You could walk right up to these with no barrier.
The main rotunda area that houses the tombs of the greatest of the Medici is an insane place, complex inlaid marble everywhere. It's hard to capture scale, too - the sarcophagus there is probably ten feet off the ground.
Really a beautiful space.
Then we headed over to the Santa Maria Novella church, mainly because it was right next to the train station, where we had to be at 1:00pm. This is a really lovely place, with every chapel ceiling frescoed within an inch of its life, and big internal gardens as well.
This is a fake door painted on the wall and these nuns were having a photo shoot wherein they pretended to unlock and open it. After this they ran over to the third nun who was taking the pictures and they all looked at it and giggled. It was DELIGHTFUL.
We had signed up for a half-day trip into the Chianti wine region of Tuscany. It was the perfect length - many of those bus tours are 13 hour+ marathons - and really nice to get out of the cities and see a little of the countryside.
Tuscany looks exactly like it's portrayed in the movies, to an almost comical degree.
We went to two wineries. They told us about the difference between Chianti Classico, which they claim is the real thing, and Chianti, an additional region created by the Italian government to capitalize on the Chianti Classico name.
Both vineyards also grew olives, and had olive oils available for tasting too.
This lady was quite animated and did a great job with a wine & cheese tasting at Il Palagio, our first winery.
The second one was smaller, but an absolutely beautiful setting.
After the wineries they took us to a small village, Greve in Chianti, where we visited a famous butcher shop.
We got samples of various meats & cheeses. Some other patrons bought their own food and sat down at the end of this table, and the people in our group kept trying to eat from their plate as well and it was extremely hilarious.
It makes sense that wine & olives are both features of southern Spain & Italy since they share the same climate and terrain, but why are they also both into cured pork, I wonder? I bought several packages of prosciutto and sausage to bring back to Ben, then started looking into it and discovered the US government really does not like you to bring in meats from foreign lands. I was going to try to sneak it in but then got paranoid about being sent to customs prison, so I ended up declaring it like a good girl and the border agents didn't even mention it! MEAT SUCCESS!!
This was a cute little village but we only had a few minutes to explore before heading back.
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