![]() ![]() ![]() The next evening when Maria arrived from visiting her family in Amsterdam, she was obviously tired from her trip. Amanda only said she could tell I was a good person. Between the three of them I never ended up paying full-price for anything. The first evening I sat there drinking wine and enjoying a meal and taking some notes, Amanda treated me to a glass of limoncello and she discounted the meal a bit. Maria and I spent our time there in the mornings and evenings during our five-day stay in Florence and left them alone during their busy lunch times. ![]() Three people operate the space, Nino, the owner, Daniela, who looks like a body builder, and Amanda. The café has a tiny inside space but the main activity is outside in the center of the square. It’s also the time for the staff and a few neighbors to have their evening meal, which they do in style. In the evening it becomes a place for locals to have drinks and talk. In the afternoon it serves hungry tourists. In the morning it serves espressos and pastries to the attorneys, judges and other court officials before they go to work. The centerpiece of this activity was the Caffe’ Mingo. There’s a very active courthouse that’s open six days per week, one of the city’s oldest restaurants, and of course, the requisite historical sites (including the Torre Della Castagna, an ancient tower built in the 10th Century, and the tiny chapel of the Compagnia dei Buonomini, where Dante may have been married and which also served as a refuge for once wealthy households who lost everything because of political alliances). While many of the tourist haunts are minutes away by foot in all directions-including the Uffizi, the adjacent Piazza della Signoria, and Dante di casa-San Martino is bustling in other ways. The plaza is about the size of a postage stamp, yet life flows around it like the river of tourists that are led by their guides below my window to where it is believed that Dante once lived. Maria and I were fortunate to be staying at a bed and breakfast in the Piazza San Martino. It’s that it exists right under our noses, yet it’s easy to miss. It’s not so much knowing that this other place exists. A place where people work and live where they meet in the evenings to discuss the day’s events and where they share the secrets of this great city. They crowd the shops.īut even in the most touristed areas of the city there is another Florence. They swarm all of the well-known landmarks of this city. They queue outside the narrow courtyard of the Uffizi Gallery an hour before the museum opens. It’s July in Florence and it’s hotter than Dante’s Inferno. ![]()
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