Spring Break: Florence

On Sunday night, we finally arrived in Florence. We got out of the train station completely exhausted from our crazy weekend in Rome and immediately started searching for our hostel, which was very nice and spacious. It was about a fifteen minute walk from the train station. That night, we were all pretty cranky so we just had dinner and went to bed very early to catch up on the sleep we didn't get in Rome.


The next morning we woke up early. We decided to rent bikes to travel around the city on our only full day there. It ended up being an amazing decision. The bikes were a ton of fun to ride and made seeing all the sites in one day very easy. This is a picture of Rock and I riding our bikes down an alley towards the Duomo.



First we hit the Duomo, the famous Cathedral in Florence. The outside of the church was beautiful, with a colorful exterior. However, the inside of the church was very dark and plain. We didn't spend much time looking around because there wasn't much to look at. However, there was a beautiful dome, so once again we decided to pay a few euros to climb to the top. Seeing the dome up close was amazing, bringing you face to face with the paintings, which depicted a view of heaven vs. hell. If you weren't scared of hell before seeing this dome, you definitely were after seeing this painting up close. We then headed to the top of the dome. Once again, the view was very cool. You could see the entire view of the city from the top. We walked around for a while before heading down to move on to our next destination.




We then headed over to Michelangelo Hill. The walk up was pretty brutal. However, at the top, there was an amazing view accompanied by a gelato shop. So we got some more gelato and enjoyed the view. However, the wind picked up and it got pretty chilly so we headed back down.

For the rest of the day, we just rode our bikes around, stopping at the occasional market to pick up some small souvenirs. We had a lot of fun just weaving in and out of traffic, riding down small alleyways and through piazzas. Overall, it was a really fun day. The night was spent hanging out in our hostel, where we met some very interesting people from Australia. We also met an architect from the US; he got laid off because of the recession and decided to pack up and travel around Europe alone to fill up his sketch book. The three of us spent most of the night speaking to these three people, who each had some pretty amazing travel stories. We headed out for a few drinks before going to bed.

The next morning, we went to the San Marco Museum, where the statue of David is located. We waited in line for about twenty minutes, during which we signed the wall with the hope it would be there if we ever returned. Before seeing David, we went to another exhibit, which held ancient musical instruments. It was very cool. Steve is really into music so he was helpful explaining the instruments he recognized. We then headed over to the David, where we sat in awe for a while. The statue is so perfectly sculpted and designed. Once again, I had the boys hide me so I could sneak a picture.

We then packed up our stuff before heading to the train station. This time, we were off to Venice.