We checked into our hotel, the Hotel Benivieni, only a few steps away from the famed, massive Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore (Mary of the Flowers). The hotel is quite nice for our needs, with a reasonable sized room, air conditioning, and not too noisy.
Friday evening we walked around and settled on a light dinner on the Piazza Signorini near the Palazzo Vecchio, where we were married 12 years ago.
Saturday morning we walked across the Ponte Vecchio (everything here is vecchio, or "old") and ended up walking through the Boboli gardens, which overlook the Palazzo Pitti (which we did not go in, not yet) and all of Florence.
After a picnic lunch we bought a few books at an English-language bookshop direcly across our from our hotel--planning for a leisurely week--and after negotiating a local shop had a picnic lunch of bread, cheese, salami and wine in our room.
In the afternoon we went inside the Duomo--did I mention it was massive?--and then toured the Duomo museum.
There will be many pictures to come! We have a week here, so we are taking it easy.
