Florence Is a Fantastic Place to be Stranded

Watching one of Florence's famous sunsets

Florence was always on our itinerary.  But, as I mentioned in my last post, it was not our intention to get stranded here a couple days early. I've visited Florence before and count it among my favourite cities, so it is the best possible location to be stranded.

Because we had more time than intended in Florence, we had time to check out some yoga studios.  Florence may not come to mind as a yoga destination, but the two studios I visited have made it into my list of all-time favourite yoga spaces.

The first place I visited was called It's Yoga.  The walls had Medieval frescoes and the building had a lovely courtyard.  The next day I visited a place I liked even better called Yoga Garage. The studio was originally a Medieval church and was also used a bookstore.

Practicing yoga in a church-turned bookstore-turned yoga studio

I loved using the bookshelves along the walls and the paintings on the ceilings as focal points.  I enjoyed the class so much that I ended up going back in the morning on the day I left Florence.

I also visited a previously undiscovered gelato shop, Gelateria dei Neri.  I've had a lot of gelato on all my trips to Italy, but this has to be one of my favourite shops of them all! They also had lots of vegan flavours. (I am planning future blog posts detailing vegetarian/vegan restaurants in Italy, Iceland, and the UK.)

I think we went to this gelato shop every single day

I also took time to see some of the museums that I didn't make it to during my last visit.  One of the highlights was the Medici Chapel.  I also visited the Dante Museum since The Divine Comedy is one of the best works of literature ever.  The museum was an interesting look into Florence during his time.  There wasn't a ton about Dante himself, but considering that he was exiled from Florence at the end of his life, it isn't that surprising that not that many artifacts have survived the centuries.  

One night, we decided to attend an Italian cooking class at Lorenzo di Medici cooking school.  I had never made pasta from scratch before!  We had a hard time rolling the dough thin enough so we were assisted by a pasta machine.  The class was a lot of fun and we got to keep the recipe and our aprons!

Attempting to get the dough thin enough

On our final day in Florence, we went on a Grape Tour, visiting three of the Tuscan region's vineyards.  The scenery was gorgeous and it was really interesting to learn the history of each vineyard.  We even visited a wine cellar that was 500 years old!

The gorgeous Tuscan vineyards

Florence is definitely one of those cities that I could see myself one day calling home!

Florence is so photogenic