…turns out, I don’t like Florence that much. It’s just too much. Too big, too busy, too full of people, and this is the off season. I can only imagine the hellscape that it is during high season.

We’re in an apartment in the center of Florence, just a couple of minutes’ walk from the Duomo (you can step outside and see it).

Yes, there’s lots of great art and architecture around, but it’s mostly HELLO WE’RE THE MEDICI AND YOU’RE NOT.

We did follow the advice of Ex Urbe to find a gelato shop and yesterday had excellent gelato from a place that keeps it covered up with metal lids (a sure sign of good gelato), and today had some from Perche Non (sorry not sure how to put the accent in with this Bluetooth keyboard). Well, Toby had gelato and I had sorbetto as I had gelato last night and, despite the Lactaid, had, um, reactions to it, shall we say. But the sorbetto is dairy-free and theirs was delicious—I had lemon and persimmon, and I am amazed that I actually liked the persimmon. I probably shouldn’t be—we had a persimmon tree in the yard in one of the houses I lived in growing up, but the only one I ever ate was picked by my dad and wasn’t really ripe. (Our dog loved to eat the fallen persimmons!)

Anyway, so far, Florence 0, gelato 1.