Here we are on our way to Florence! I think Britt is tired of taking pics...
We walked from the train station to try and find our hotel. Here is one of the many cathedrals in Florence, I still don't know the name of it...
On our walk, we passed a cafe named "Deanna" which is awesome, that's Mom's name.
Here is Britt's confident face... she knows she can find the hotel, even without an address.
Here we are, at the bottom of the hotel's elevator. We walked, tugging our luggage behind us, for about 10 minutes until I convinced them to take the 8 euro taxi a few blocks to save us hours and a headache.
Here we are in the elevator, it was small.
Britt was pretty exhausted.
We were all hungry, so we stopped in a restaurant for dinner. It turned out to be the best lasagna we have ever had!
Britt is pretty goofy.
After dinner, we headed to try and find the Leather Factory. Florence has been known for the Leather produced there.
Britt is excited that she found the sign for the Leather Factory. It was pretty hard to find.
The next day we went to the Uffizi Gallery.
The above picture is of one of the many staircases we had to climb up to the gallery. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so I collected the following images from Google.
This is one of my favorite paintings that we saw in Florence. It is by Giotto, the same Giotto who painted the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, who is considered the Father of the Renaissance. He is an incredible painter.
This is another of my favorite paintings in the Uffizi Gallery. It is the Holy Family by Michelangelo. The picture does no justice to the colors.
These two paintings were Mom's favorites. Both are painted by Botticelli. The above is called Primavera, the one below is the Birth of Venus. They were huge. These pictures don't do any justice to the paintings.
These were also Britt's favorite paintings because there was a little fan located by them. That's the only reason.
This is the replica of Michelangelo's David, that is in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.
And here is the Florence Cathedral, also known as the Duomo. This was my must see in Florence. This building has a wonderful story behind it. I wish i had more time to tell all of you but basically it is a story about an artist losing one competition and winning an even greater one by building the dome that is now one of the most recognized pieces of architecture in the world.
Another competition was held to see who would decorate the facade. Emilio De Fabris won and decorated the cathedral in white, green and red marble. It is beautiful.
Above is a picture of the Florence Baptistery.
I guess my pictures are a little out of order because this is a picture of the Gates of Paradise, designed by Lorenzo Ghiberti, who won the first competition and received the commission for the doors, beating out Brunelleschi who later came back to beat Ghiberti in order to design the dome.
Above is a mosaic inside the Florence Baptistery.
After looking at a bunch of art, and realizing that a bunch of things I wanted to see were closed, we decided to catch a bus to go to the outlet mall. We were pretty excited because we had heard that Florence had great shopping. The stores around the Piazzas were pretty expensive so we had high hopes for the outlet mall. We had directions from our hotel manager that described were to meet the bus that would take us there. He even gave us a coupon!! Well that day, we waited around and no one seemed to know where we needed to be. All of a sudden we see the bus that we needed to catch, and so here is the picture of Britt chasing the bus, and walking back defeated.
Don't worry, we caught the bus a little afterwards, as it turned the corner and stopped right where we were waiting. The drive was only about thirty minutes. We had gone later in the day. The bus was scheduled to return around six so we had a few hours to burn shopping. It wasn't until a few shops into our perusal, that we realized that 50% off expensive, is still expensive :). We ended up waiting around for the bus and not buying a thing. It was a big bummer.
We did get some gelato though:). It was tasty!
When we returned, Mom and I went on a walk through Florence and stumbled upon this chalk artist who was replicating the famous paintings we had seen in the Uffizi just that morning, but in chalk on the sidewalk. It was very impressive.
The next morning we woke up bright and early to catch a train to go to Cinque Terra. This was a series of towns a few hours away that were right on the coast of Italy.
Did I mention it was a ghetto train?
The train was miserable. It was inter-city, which meant it stopped every 5 minutes to pick up and drop off passengers. It took us 5 hours to get to Cinque Terra which is only 1.5 hours away. So the above picture is of Mom saying in a Magnolia Country accent, "This train is for the birds".
The intercity train picked up a bunch of male day workers. Needless to say, it was a little scary being the only women on this train with all these workers. So, this is Mom with her protective wooden umbrelly, ready to strike.
But it was all worth it. Here is Cinque Terra. It is beautiful.
Mom asked me to take a pic of these flowers. She liked the color. The following pictures are in no specific order and give you a little taste of the sites we saw.
Below is a picture of the wine I bought. I also bought some raw pasta and pesto sauce. I thought it would be cute to get the ingredients for a meal to make Caleb when I got home. I did and it was. The wine and pesto were delicious by the way!
Here I am carrying dinner home :)
Unfortunately, we had to rush back to Florence, because I wanted to climb the Duomo and it was our last day in Florence and the previous day it was closed. Britt was nice enough to let her day be cut short. So here are some pics of the inside of the dome.
Below is a picture of the stairs I climbed to the top, something like 469 stairs total. I was exhausted (especially after the 2 mile jog to the Duomo from the train station, to ensure we made it there in time).
The following are pictures from the top of the Duomo. It was the best experience.
This is from the top of the Duomo and it is a picture of the Bell tower. You could climb that too, but why when you could climb the Duomo and be higher??
We left Florence bright and early the next day. Here is Mom waiting on the bed until it is time to go.
Here is Britt pulling her luggage to the train station.
