The topics for today’s lecture are:

RED, a restaurant, Piazza della Repubblica

Odeon Cinema, near Palazzo Strozzi in the Piazza Strozzi

Gucci Museum, Piazza della Signoria

Are you ready to get down to business?  OK, pens and notebooks at the ready, let’s begin!  Cominciamo!

After a beautiful, quiet Christmas Day, which brought together (virtually and actually) all of the people and things I love, today a new friend and I had a nice lunch at the restaurant inside Feltrinelli Bookstore on the Piazza della Repubblica.  Certain parts of Florence are so contemporary in design that it is almost breathtaking to someone who has been coming here for over 30 years. C’est moi.

The modern little bistro inside Feltrinelli’s is called RED, which stands for Read, Eat, Dream–in English, alas–I am beginning to fear that Italian itself will be outmoded in cosmopolitan Firenze in my lifetime!

Che tragedia!

Yes, it will indeed be a tragedy if Italian is lost in the Florentine world of the spoken word.

But it is holiday time and let’s not discuss the perils of the americanization da bella Firenze. Give it a rest, people!

I’ll retrace my steps today and round out the lecture with pictures and a map.

We started at the Piazza della Repubblica, which is a mighty square within the city’s fabric. You can find it here just to the left of center, 1/2 way between top and bottom:

The square looks like this from above:

Feltrinelli and RED are inside the beautiful loggia which runs across the south side of the Piazza della Repubblica. In the picture below you can see the ground-floor loggia running out both sides from the center arch.

The bookstore is located inside the loggia.

And RED is located inside the bookstore.

Are you with me?

You got it?

Good!

Okay then, let’s look inside!

Very sleek and cool, no?

RED is a chic little bistro with a small menu of great dishes.  I went all American and had a hamburger served with carmelized onions and freshly home-made potatoes chips.  It was great!

Our next stop was the Odeon theater near Palazzo Strozzi in Piazza Strozzi.

I wish all movie theaters could be as pretty and elegant as the Odeon!  I mean, look at the interior!!

We sat in the gold velveteen covered comfortable chairs in the orchestra section.  It wouldn’t have mattered what movie we saw, as it was the experience of the theater and the city we were after.  But, as it happens, we saw a good film about Ireland (Jimmy’s Hall). 

The theater experience in this fine Italian cinema includes a coffee bar where you can get a great cafe or cappucino, and beer or wine, certain liquors, and apperitivi, as well as snacks. The Italians know how to make the movie experience, as so many of life’s everyday events, memorable!

The two bars at either end of the lobby look something like the picture above.

We strolled through the historic center of Florence, heading back towards our apartments in the Santa Croce neighborhood and as it was dusk but still early, we decided to have a bite and a pot of tea at the elegant restaurant at the Gucci Museum on the Piazza della Signoria. 

The restaurant inside is tres chic!  Really modern, stylish, and gorgeous.

Even the brown and white sugar cubes are embossed into the Gucci symbol.

The ceramic tea sets and other dishes are beautiful as well, as one would expect from a world-class operation such as this!

It was a pretty amazing day and when we returned, the partridge had flown the coop. So, I guess Christmas is officially over for me.

But wait, Jan. 6, 2015 will be the day that La Befana visits, so not so fast, buster!