Venice to Florence

day 10 – giorno dieci

It was hard to leave Venezia this morning. I love the absence of vehicles and motorbikes and everything functions like a pretty well oiled machine. We took water taxis back to the bus station because the vaporettos weren’t running early enough from our stop.

Back on the bus, we headed for Florence.

As we arrived in Florence, Sarah played Hotel California because guess the name of our hotel… Our rooms weren’t quite ready, so we dropped bags and went for a walk. Tara studied abroad in Florence so she became mom’s and my temporary tour guide. Our hotel was just a couple blocks from the Duomo and we had a few hours on our own, so we set off to do a quick tour. We circled the Duomo and baptistery, and then headed for the mercato centrale to grab a small lunch.

We were in line eyeing some pizza when a guy walked by with a beautiful olive/tomato/lettuce plate with a huge mound of mozzarella in the middle. It looked so delicious we asked where he got it and followed suit. Such a simple meal but so fresh and flavorful.

We boogied back to the hotel after lunch to get checked in to our rooms because we were meeting the group again for a orientation tour. This hotel was a maze. The hostess had to show us how to get to our room because we had to go through this other elevator/hallway that wasn’t directly connected to the hotel. We had a beautiful room with a tiny balcony, just wide enough for a little table and two chairs. No room for legs though, I had to sit sideways when I went out for just a min. It’s a good thing I have a good memory for routes because Mom kept wanting to turn the wrong way to and from our room.

We met the group outside the hotel and headed off back towards the Duomo with Sarah in the lead, talking through our earbuds as we went. Quite a nifty tool that guides use. The guide can speak fairly softly into the mike, but everyone in the group can hear her just fine as long as they don’t lag too far behind.

The cathedral here in Florence is famous for Brunelleschi’s dome, a huge dome built with no scaffolding before the days of architects and engineers. I can’t even imagine. Apparently men would work from sun up to sun down, taking their lunch and wine up in the morning to keep them sustained throughout the day. Apparently only a few fell off with no serious injuries… That’s amazing in itself! It is possible to climb up into the dome, but it’s such a popular thing to do, tickets were sold out.

It’s very sad to say, but we’ve seen so many duomos and bell towers and baptisteries, they’re all starting to blend together. But I do think Milano’s Duomo is my favorite so far. From the duomo we walked to Piazza della Signoria, passing through Piazza della Republica on the way. The Palazzo Vecchio is still the city’s courthouse. The main entryway is guarded by a copy of Michelangelo’s David and another huge sculpture. The real David was actually intended to be placed very high up on the Duomo. It was placed there for a time and then removed and placed in front of Palazzo Vecchio. There was some ruckus a while ago and a piece of furniture was thrown out a window which landed on David’s arm and cracked it. It was then moved to it’s current home, at the the Accademia Gallery, to keep him protected, for the most part.

With that, we headed back in the direction of the hotel to the Accademia Gallery to see the real David!

Of course I knew of David, but what I didn’t know is that the statue is 14 ft tall! He’s huge! Plus he’s on a pedestal, so his feet are above head level. It was quite the experience to see this giant piece of famous art in real life. Apparently a loony person attacked David’s foot with a hammer fairly recently and now it’s all scraped up. There’s big panels of plexiglass surrounding him now.

We were released to spend as long as we wanted in the Accademia, and then meet up again for dinner a couple hours later.

Florence is known for this particular way of preparing beef which is quite rare. We had a pasta dish of course, and then this beef dish. So delicious. And quite the show beforehand!

After dinner, Tara, Norm, Mariellyn, Mom, and I took a long stroll around the Duomo. Tara and I spotted this bar that said it was also a record store… interesting? We popped in for a minute just to see what it was all about. Bar downstairs and super cool record shop upstairs. The register desk even had a turntable!

The cities are so much quieter at night and with all the lights on you can still see the great sights.

Now I’m very full and totally pooped. Tomorrow morning we’re supposed to go to the Uffizi Gallery but supposedly they’re going to strike… Fingers crossed their plans change!