We left a rainy Venice only to discover that Florence itself was experiencing less than ideal weather. The evening we arrived we checked in to our hotel room and quickly set out for the Academia Museum before it closed. The Academia is best known for Michelangelo's statue of David, along with a few of the artists unfinished statues as well. The Academia does not allow pictures, so we tried to get a photo of us with a replica the next day.
That night we enjoyed a delicious dinner of pizza and pasta, which was becoming a main source of food for the two of us. When in Italy, right? After dinner, we enjoyed a couple of drinks in the Piazza del Duomo (a main square in Florence outside of the Duomo church), but decided to retire early back to the hotel as the weather was quite cold and Travis was nursing a bit of a cold (the kind that makes other tourists run for their hand sanitizer).
We woke up early the next day, prepared to see all of Florence in just a few hours! Ok, so we left some things unseen, but we did a pretty good job fitting in as many Florence sights as we could. Alazda has been reading the new Dan Brown book Inferno which takes place in Florence and wanted to see some of the sights talked about in the book along with the main Florence sights. We left our hotel to discover that the weather was rainy and cold, with little time to spare we set off for our first sight of the day - The Uffizi Gallery.
The Uffizi Gallary was full of tourists and tour groups that had come to see the amazing Renaissance art exhibits as well as stay out of the rain. We shuffled from room to room seeing great works of art, assisted by our trusty audio tour (thanks Rick Steves)! We left the Uffizi and were greeted by 5 minutes without rain which we quick snapped some pictures before eating another lunch of pizza and pasta, yum!
We took a brief stop in to the Palazzo Vecchio so Alazda could see the Hall of Five Hundred from her book before heading to the Duomo. The Duomo is made up of lots of possible sights to see, but trying to find a dry spot we quickly found the first open line to get inside fast. Turns out we had opted to see the Campanile (bell tower) first and were lucky enough to be climbing the 414 steps to the top in order to stay dry (guess we had to work off the pizza and pasta somehow). The views of florence were amazing, so amazing that we went to decided to climb the Dome of the Duomo also just an hour later (thats another 463 steps to anyone keeping track). We ended with a quick stop in the Baptistery, before having to book it to the train station to get to Rome.
Ciao,
Alazda and Travis
We climbed a 463 steps to get to this spot so here is our picture in the rain
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