Last 2 Days in Italy: Florence

The next stop on our trek was two days in Florence, though I feel like I could have spent the whole time in Rome – there was so much to see! Florence had a quaint, non-touristy feel to it though that made it much more European to walk around in.

This was the view from our room. It overlooked a park and the famous “Duomo” (Basilica di Santa Maria) in the city. The park always had people in it, usually just sitting and talking to one another, walking their dogs, children running around screaming. At one point we even passed what looked like a family reunion – there had to be about 40 people there!

The morning after we arrived, rather than see Florence first we got on a train to Pisa and to see the tower lean! It’s hiding behind the cathedral in this picture.

Pisa was nice and very small, but really all there was to see there was the tower itself:

That evening we went to the top of a hill Jackie recommended with a bottle of wine and snacks to eat dinner and watch the sunset. This is a view of Old Bridge (and two other bridges) while the sun was still in the sky.

One of the “David” replicas is also at the top of this hill. Even he gets to watch the sun set over Florence! There was a family sitting right below the statue eating ice cream while I took this picture.

The hill was great and clearly a tourist attraction, but still fun. We sat on some stairs with a bunch of other people (probably around 50 on the stairs themselves and dozens more along a wall above us). There were two guys playing live music as the sun set, mostly playing covers of US songs, but they were pretty good! This is after the sun has gone down a bit more:

On our walk home we stumbled upon the Duomo. It was hard to get pictures at night, but we figured we take one anyway:

That’s the bell tower of the Duomo, and this is the front of the cathedral. The details that went into this building are amazing: all of the small sculptures, paintings, carvings along the pillars and columns, intricate arches and outcroppings. The picture certainly doesn’t do it justice, but then when does a picture do anything justice?

This was David replica number two outside of the Uffizi museum. We never actually made it into the museum, but outside of it there is an outdoor room with more than a dozen statues of various Roman gods and Greek myths. Along one outside wall of the museum they also have statues of other famous people, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli and Amerigo Vespucci.

After the museum we made our way to the other most famous spot in Florence: The Old Bridge. There were lots of people here walking to or from the bridge. On it there were dozens of jewelry shops, most of which were selling the same things, a couple of other tourist item shops, and views down the river. On the other side were some more shops, Palazzo Pitti, but also just more city.

This was a view down river from The Old Bridge.

Apparently it’s also common for people to write their names and/or a message on a lock, and lock it to the chains outside of the Old Bridge and along the sidewalk leading to it. Some people had really pre-planned this and even had the locks engraved!

The jaunt to The Old Bridge was the last stop on our trip to Florence. After that we got on the plane to go back to Amsterdam for a few more days. While Andrew would have to work though, I was ready to do more sightseeing!