Florence, Italy

When we arrived in Florence after Rome, the first day we just did a lot of walking around, seeing the city.  First, we stayed in the Grand Hotel Minerva which was very nice and had really good breakfasts.  We went into a few shops, which Florence has a lot of.  They are well known for their shopping district and leather.  There were markets and stores for leather everywhere.  We ventured over to the Piazza del Duomo and got to see the Duomo and the opera house, but we couldn't go into either one of them because they were closed for the evening.  They were both different from any style of buildings I have seen so far.  The colors on the outside were beautiful.  Apparently this region along with Tuscany were competing against each other to make the best churches.  Florence decided to spend of their money on the outside, and didn't have much left to make the inside quite as spectacular.

The building closest in the picture is the opera house and the building in the foreground is the Duomo. 

Then we went to the Piazza della Repubblica and saw the arch and column which shows some of the only historical remnants in this piazza.  While in this piazza we saw a really cool Mercedes parked in front of this hotel.  It looks to be a 50's or early 60's style.

We walked through some streets and shops before reaching the Piazza della Signoria and seeing the Palazzo Vecchio. Here there was an old Palace with statues everywhere.  There was a replica of the statue of David along with other really neat statues.  This was also situated next to the Ufici which we did not see because we wanted to see the Acadamia instead, and by this time were a little tired of museums after being in Rome.

This last picture is the archway of the Ufici leading out to the Arno River and getting a perfect view of the Ponte Vecchio, which is a beautiful site.  I have seen see a bridge constructed like that, with so many colors and taking the shape of a building crossing the river. This bridge has consists of stores selling extremely expensive diamond and gold jewelry.  

That night for dinner we ate an outside restaurant in the Piazza della Repubblica that we were in earlier.  Funny story about the place we ate at because when we were there earlier this really nice guy approached my parents and tried to get them to eat lunch there.  They loved the guy and decided they wanted to go back for dinner.  We got free champagne before dinner and we all had really good meals.  Mom and I split wine and dad got a liter of beer, because he is a big boy.  I had a wild boar sauce and meat over pasta because I was very interested to see what it tasted like.  It was very good.  I can't really describe the taste.  We stayed there and talked for a really long time.  When we started to walk away, the guy who previously tried to get my parents to eat lunch there ran after us and told us he wanted to give us all shots of limoncello.  They were all so nice. 

The next morning we started out by eating a very good lunch in the dining room before we headed to see the Duomo.  It was raining, which was actually the first time since I have been traveling that it has rained.  But it was very light and only lasted a few hours.  Like I said before, the Duomo wasn't that impressive on the inside but I really liked the tile and the painting on the ceiling.  There was also a terrace that you could walk on high in the Duomo, but we didn't do that.  

From there we went to the Academia where there were a lot of sculptures, the most famous being Michelangelo's statue of David.  He had other work in there as well, and there were a lot of sculptures from the artist Botticelli.  As I mentioned in my Rome blog, I traveled to Rome with John because he was also meeting his parents and traveling to some of the same places as I was.  But it was still shocking that while in a big city like Florence, standing in line for the Academia we ran into him and his family.  We walked through the Academia together before splitting off.  There were no cameras allowed in this entire museum and they were very strict about the statue of David but I had to try and sneak a few pictures in.  

We did a lot o shopping after this and went back to the Ponte Vecchio as well.  My dad bought two pair of shoes and we met a really nice guy at one of the stores that we probably talked to for about 45 minutes.  That night for dinner we decided to try this place near our hotel called Bucca Mario.  It was a recommended place that they said you needed a reservation, which we didn't have, but they were very nice and seated us within 15 minutes.  While standing there, which was right next to the kitchen, I saw the biggest steak I have ever seen.  They had three steaks on their menu for one, two, or three people and this one was the one for three.  It looked amazing.  The restaurant was actually underground.  We had to walk down a few steps to enter.  When I first walked in there was hardly any room and there were only about ten tables that I could see for seating.  But when our hostess took us to our seat it ended up being a maze and actually very large.  There was a lot of people and a lot of seating.  It was a very nice atmosphere and we all had very good meals.  Italian food is so good.  We relaxed that night and I got up very early the next morning and went to the train station to see if we could get tickets to Venice early that day.  I went at 7 in the morning and the only reasonable ticket for doing one day in Venice left at 8:30. So I sprinted back to the hotel to wake my parents so we could catch that train. That's how Venice started.