July 5, a Florence market tour and cooking at a Tuscan Farmhouse

My mom and I began our day early and headed out to find our way to the meeting point for our tour. It was not easy mavigating the public bus system here. I feel like we will probably only just figure it out when it is time to leabe Florence. Also the randomness of the city streets doesnt help when we find ourselves lost. We did however, make it there in time. Good thing we allowed an extra hour in our schedule for getting lost. 

 

 We met up with the tour group and began our walk toward the central market. Our tour guode, Eliza, stopped periodically along the way to point out interesting architectural points of interest and explain the history and significance. 

 

This was once a "Wine Hole". There would be a wine seller behind it with a big wine barrel and people would bring their wine jugs to be filled by passing them through the hole which was specially sized and shaped to fit a tuscan wine jug. There would be a plack posted above with the strict wine selling rules engraved on it. Such as the fact that wine sellers were not allowed to give their customers salty snacks which could make them thirsty and entice them to buy more wine. 

 

This engraved sign says that Michelangelo lived here. 

 

 

This is a church that has an unfinished facade. Aparenrltly Michelangelo had been commissioned to make one but he died before it was completed and the powers that be didn't feel that it would have been right to have it completed by someone else so they decided to leave it unfinished. 

 

We stopped here to buy tuscan bread and learned one of the possible reasons that traditional tuscan bread doesn't contain salt. A legend says says that in a feud with Pisa the coastal city witheld salt from Florence and salt    rationing ensued. So tuscan bread began to be made unsalted to conserve salt. Tuscans are proud of theirunsalted bread but it isn't my favorite; I think the bread tastes bland without salt.