GustaPanino is on Piazza Santo Spirito, opposite the church – choose your type of sandwich, then your filling and sit on the church steps to eat it in the sun!  This is the bohemian, art studenty, artisanal workshop side of the city so you can do some seriously amusing people-watching here!  Students from the art school I went to (Charles Cecil Studios) often work in here, so get chatting!  The restaurants in Piazza Santo Spirito are rather lovely too, especially the one next door to GustaPanino (alleyway in between) – VERY cheap and frequented by all the local artisans and no English translations on the menu – hooray!

It is THE most FANTASTIC ice cream shop, but possibly only visitable by bus/car as it’s on the outskirts.  The ice creams cost about half of those in the centre of Florence and they give you double the quantity!  (mmm...)  The best flavours (officially) are ‘Bongo’ (chocolate profiterole with bits.  There is actually nothing better in life.) and Millefoglie (vanilla-y with bits of millefeuille.  Dreamy.)  The cafe is most famous, however, for its Buontalenti ice cream.  You just have to try them all to decide for yourself.

If you want to go to one churchwhile you're there (and you should, then go to Santa Croce, but cunningly sneak in the back way to avoid paying €5 entry fees – go round the left of the façade and through the arch to the Leather School.  Follow the path straight ahead and go up a rickety iron staircase (this may sound perilous, but I’m saving you money so you can splash out on more ice creams later).  This is the entrance to the Leather school.  Go straight and you’ll hit the workbenches of the monks (they will gild initials onto anything you buy there for free) and you’re IN!  Ignore the signs saying “You should have paid to be in this bit of the church”, feel extremely clever and look innocent.  (No one checks, don’t worry.) 

Here you can see Michelangelo's vile tomb, a stunning chapel by the first artist of the Renaissance, Giotto, some beautiful cloisters (great for reading in on a summer's day!) and a brilliant Donatello too.  NB the markings just above head-height on the walls - that's where the water got up to in the great flood of 1966!  LOTS of artwork got ruined (especially everything in the crypts of course) but luckily the angeli del fango (angels of the mud) stepped in JUST in time to help with the clean-up operation and save some artistic greats.