Florence

Saturday morning we grabbed some breakfast at a bakery (croissants of course) and then hauled ourselves and our luggage to the train station. It had gotten really crowded for the carnival (it was the last weekend for it) so it was quite the journey going through crowds and over bridges with all our things. The train station was very crowded and offered no seating so we had to stand and wait until our platform was displayed on the board. They put up the platform anywhere from 30 mins before to 5 mins before the train leaves- this we learned once we got to the station so we realized it wasn't worth it to get there super early, especially when we already had assigned seats. Maybe 10 mins before, our platform was announced and then it was more waiting for the train to get cleaned out before they let us on.  Tyler was happy with the seats I bought us. We had no one next to us and sat directly across from each other with a table in between. Our backpacks went above us and there was plenty of room under our seats for our other bags. I spent the ride drawing and listening to music, it was nice. The ride was a couple hours and they even offered us snacks and drinks. It was a nice experience. 

 

When we arrived in Florence it was raining and that made it feel like a long 15 minute walk with our baggage. I had put my backpack on my roller bag but the streets were so bumpy and full of puddles and most sidewalks are only a foot wide. My phone was getting so wet because I had it out to navigate and the wetness made it difficult to navigate. Then Google did not send us to the right place and we had to backtrack and then when we buzzed the door he didn't respond for awhile. Once buzzed in we had several narrow flights of stairs to navigate.  Not my favorite journey. At least the place was nice- everything was updated, there was shelving for organizing and the bed was really comfortable.  We took some to recuperate from the journey.

Once recovered we decided to go get some food. I made it an unofficial rule to eat at one nice Italian restaurant in every city so this was our nice restaurant, Ristorante II Morellino. We went specifically for the steak and it ended up being a great choice. Tyler got 1.2kg (the smallest amount you can order) of medium rare steak and would you belive he ate all of it? I did help some but that was mostly him. I got some pear filled ravioli that was quite amazing. It was a good, fancy, valentine's day meal for us. 

After our yummy food, we went looking for a grocery store to get some breakfast for the next day since we were going to have to be somewhere early and wouldn't have time to stop. Instead of ending up at a grocery store like we had planned, we ended up at a market. Lots of booths selling different food. We managed to find some bananas and croissants for the next day. We dropped those back off at our bnb and then headed off to our tour of the secret Michelangelo room in the Medici chapel. 

We arrived right in time for our tour and a guide ushered us and 3 others to the secret room. She told us how it was believed that Michelangelo was hiding in this room from the Medici family (under their own chapel!?) and had drawn on the walls to entertain himself. They discovered the room when looking for another exit for the chapel. The drawings were amazing and inspirational as I've been trying (and failing) at sketching lately. 

After we saw the drawings, we went up and explored the chapel. The chapels here make you feel so small. They are so over the top in everything. While there, Tyler discovered that reliquaries hold physical remains of a saint (usually bones) and was properly disgusted by it.

To end our day we grabbed some Gelato and pizza by the cathedral de Santa Maria del Fiore (yes in that order because we are grown ups and can eat dessert first). The cathedral looked amazing in contrast to the darkness  almost unreal.

The name of the place we got our Gelato at was Venchi and it was also a chocolate store. Tyler who is typically not a big chocolate person fell in love with their hazelnut chocolate. Nearby the gelato shop was a lego store so we had to stop in but I was disappointed to discover the Lego boxes were the same ones we have in America- the words were all in English. When leaving the shops we ran across that cool golden person. Tyler gave it a Euro and it bowed to us (not sure if it was a girl or boy).

Sunday we started our day with a visit to the Galleria dell'Accademia. Michelangelo is truly an amazing artist, the details on his giant David statue were amazing. I am an idiot and didn't realize this was the David from David and Goliath and it was cool to see the details of his sling. I'm just not sure I understand why David was killing Goliath without any clothes on ;). I think my second favorite part of the museum were the statues in the beginning that kind of showed Michelangelo's carving process. Michelangelo said that this job was to free the sculpture from the marble.

For Lunch we basically had a charcuterie board at La Prosciutteria Firenze. The meat was delicious, not all of the cheeses were my favorite. Really good overall though, everything is so fresh here and feels way less processed. 

After lunch we headed over to the Uffizi Gallery. We were early for our time slot. I learned that being early for your time slot is worthless. We waited in a pointless line until we realized we just needed to wait for them to announce our time slot and then line up. Then we waited for maybe 20 mins to get inside. They do security at every museum so that can slow things down. While in line we met a guy from Colorado who had come for the Olympics. He was 45 and his wife was having their first baby (she's 38) . Wild that I'm only 2 years older than her and I have 5 kids. Nice guy though.

The museum was a lot of slow waking and Tyler got tired a lot. Apparently he doesn't do good with slow walking. There was a ton of art to see there. Some magnificent and some not my jam. Lots of virgin Mary and Jesus pictures. Some of the pictures of Jesus were not very flattering so I started doing a sort of photo scavenger hunt for unusual paintings of Jesus. Regardless of the crazy pics, there is a lot of talented artists housed there. I particularly liked the Medusa picture.

After the Uffizi Gallery we took a rest and then went back out on a walk to see the sunset. We saw (and then walked on) the Ponte Vecchio Bridge (it is the only remaining bridge to have houses and shops on it). Then we walked towards the Piazzale Michelangelo so we could get a could view of Florence as the sun set. As we approached it, we saw it was just covered with people and figured our views from the street were good enough. Much too peopley for us. Also on our way back we thought it was pretty cool how shops closed up on the bridge. They look like a bunch of wooden boxes.

We ended our last day in Florence with pizza and Gelato, of course!