Our package tour had ended in Rome a few days earlier. We had rented an apartment down near the main station for a few days. After that, it was time to hit the road again; or more precisely the rails, as we took a Frecciarossa train for a couple of nights' stay in Firenze.

The intention was that we would have the day from the time we arrived in the morning to explore Firenze a little bit, and perhaps do some shopping. (In this case, we were on our way to the leather markets.) I had also booked a tour of the Uffizi galleries for us for the afternoon, although it was an unguided tour. Yes, I'm not doing that again and if you ever get to go there, I recommend that you don't either. Make sure that you get a guided tour because it's almost impossible to find anything in that place. The following day we would take a day trip to the Cinque Terre , the 5 villages along the coast in Liguria.

This probably wasn't an ideal plan. There was far too little time even for a city as relatively small as Firenze.

Our apartment was just across from the Santa Maria Novella railway station. From there we walked roughly east south-east about half a kilometre, heading for the leather markets near the Basilica Di San Lorenzo. And we found ourselves here, in the Piazza di Madonna degli Aldobrandini.

On this occasion the term "Madonna" does not in fact refer to the mother of Jesus but rather to Giovanna Altoviti, the wife of the merchant Benci Aldobrandini, who lived in a building in this area. She was known for doing a lot of charitable work, which apparently earned her the love of the people.

That information is from the Italian version of Wikipedia. (There is no page for it in English.) There is no online reference to back it up, but it's apparently drawn from printed books and there is no reason to question the story.

The building in the rear of the shot on the left is occupied by the 2 star Hotel Lorena (which is 2 star in terms of its facilities, but has a rating of 4/5 on Trip Advisor). The ground floor, however, is occupied by the "Antica Sosta degli Aldobrandini", which literally translates as "the ancient stop of the Aldobrandini". It is a wine bar/restaurant/cafe which is open from breakfast (well, 8:30 AM anyway) to dinner, and offers a range of panini, salads and cold platters. It is also known as "Freddy's". Overall it has a rating of 3.5 on Trip Advisor. The English-language reviews (135 at the time of writing) skew towards "Excellent" with 84 reviews having that rating, and 34 "Very Good". The Italian ratings on the other hand (227) have a distinctly different weighting with 42 "Excellent", 56 "Very Good", but 38 "Poor" and 56 "Terrible". Scanning through the Italian reviews, the price seems to come up in the negative ones quite a bit. Make of that what you will if you're ever in the area.

The building on the right is occupied by the Hotel Palazzo Benci. I don't know what it's star rating is, but it rates 3.5 on Trip Advisor. The majority of the weightings seem to centre around "Very Good", though 31 "Poor" and 21 "Terrible" ratings drag that down a bit. This is academic since I'm writing this at the end of 2020 when the... what is it, 3rd, 4th? I've lost count wave of "The Bug" is ripping through Europe, and the hotel is closed.

The Antica Sosta would probably be a good place to park yourself for some people watching over a cold platter and a nice drink if you have the time and inclination to do so. In this case, it seems that the scooter rider's people watching attention has been caught by the blonde woman in the background.