Florence

Wednesday

We arrive at the train station and easily found the hostel thanks to Blake's carefully planning and good navigational skills. It's a small hotel where our room has two beds, a sink, mirror and wardrobe. The bathroom is down the hall just like at college. We both like it fine. Its in a fine location. The beds are comfy so that's all that matters.

We went to Uffizi and saw the the Birth of Venus. It was gorgeous.

The musuem made us both very tired so we stopped for some gelato as a pick me up.
We hit up the Gucci museum. It was so cool to see the Gucci dress Blake Lively wore and all of the old Gucci handbags and shoes. We both enjoyed that museum.
On our way back, we stopped at a small place to eat dinner.

We ended up doing a wine tasting each of three different red wines. It came with meats, cheeses and bread. We also got entrees but barely ate them because we were full and a little tipsy. Hehe. It was fun to drink wine in Italy. :-)

Thursday

We woke up early to try and be at the Academia gallery around 8:30 because it opened at 8:15. Getting there early helped us beat the crowd and breathe through the small museum. The main thing to see was David. He is massive! And a true work of art. You can see all of his muscles and veins. He is thirteen feet tall. It was so neat to just turn the corner and see the famous statue.

All of the museums get a little tiring. I've seen enough Madonna and child paintings to last a lifetime. All the paintings are of Jesus. When in doubt, it's Jesus. After each museum we stop at a cafe to sit, snack and relax.

We climbed the Duomo. It was 463 steps to get to the top. I don't mean like nice stairs I mean like narrow spiral staircase, really steep, one way stairs. It was rough trying to let someone pass you because it was so tight. It reminded me of the arc de triumph and climbing that. The view was well worth the trek though. You could see all of Florence. We stayed up there a while just enjoying it. And watching all of the Asian tourists. Apparently Florence is the place to be if you are Asian and like traveling in large tour groups.

We ate lunch at a nice cafe. I got tortellini. Love it!

Last thing we did was go to the Medici palace and gardens. They were so magnificent. Kind of like Versailles, but different because these gardens had hills. We took our time there and just let it soak in. It started to rain so we were literally getting soaked. We got a cappuccino in the cafe until the rain let up.

We are taking a break in the hostel before dinner because we are tired. Kind of like what we do at Disney. Go out in the morning, take a break mid day and then go back out again. Speaking of Disney, every city we've been to there is a Disney store and they are all the same.

I wish I could show you pictures but you will just have to wait for now.