Florence, Italy
This morning our first order of business was visiting the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. We ventured through the inside of the church first. Begun in 1296 and completed in 1436, the Duomo remains the largest brick dome ever constructed. Like the Pantheon I was struck by the amazingness of the architectural and engineering genius that went in to the construction of the dome. The pictures of the Duomo are neat but I’m not certain they do the magnitude of the building justice.
After venturing in the basement of the church to see its crypt, we made our way to the entry point for climbing the dome. We decided to pay an extra 7 Euros each to skip a line that we were told would take more than an hour to gain entry. That was a good move. The dome has 463 steps to its top. On the way up visitors can stop on the first inner ring to see the dome’s mural. Some tourists, including Ben and I and the four people in front of us, stop on the way up to see dome’s second interior ring as well. This is unfortunate because once you complete the second ring you are on your way back down the dome. After going down maybe 100 steps, including about six turns on a tiny spiral staircase, I was convinced we had somehow missed a turn. Ben and I found an alcove and discussed our options. Climbing the dome in Florence is one of two things you HAVE to do there (seeing the David is the other). I didn’t want to pay to climb it again, nor go all the way down, only to hike all the way back up. Ben was opposed to swimming upstream to get back to the turn we missed. I said I’d be happy to go back myself but I didn’t want to miss this. Ben reluctantly decided to come with me. It took us roughly 10 minutes of hustle and inconveniencing others to get back on the right path... but we made it. And in my opinion it was definitely worth it. The views on top of the dome were awesome. After Ben took a timeout to recover from the wrong turn, I think he enjoyed it as well.
We descended the dome and set out to find a Florence Pass for expedited admittance to the main sites in Florence, namely the Uffizi and the Academy. Our first attempt at getting a card from the information office Rick Steves recommended failed. The lady inside told us we could pick one up at the Uffizi, so we decided we would just get it upon arrival there. One our way to the museum we stopped for lunch and to buy soccer tickets for tomorrow’s ACF Fiorentina game.
Lunch was one of my favorite meals yet. The greeter who talked us into eating at his restaurant promised us free champaign and the ability to manipulate menu items however we wanted. True to his word (we returned after investigating a few other restaurants) we were served champaign upon seating. I also changed the cheese on my pear gnocchi from gorgonzola to mozzarella with no problems. It was delicious. We enjoyed our view seated on the Piazza della Repubblica. We had a nice view of the carousel and listened to an opera singer who was performing in the piazza.
Our next stop was the Uffizi Gallery. Ben and I used the Rick Steves’ audio guide. I enjoyed being told where to look within the paintings to note the elements of significance. Many of the paintings were great representatives of the difficulty of painting perspective. Photos were not allowed in the museum so I’d recommend checking here if you’d like to see some of the famous works housed in the museum. Post our three hour tour of the Uffizi we needed some gelato. I had coconut, pineapple and strawberry. It tasted like more.
My friend Jody had recommended a restaurant to us. We weren’t able to connect with the restaurant on the phone, so Ben and I decided to stop by the restaurant in an attempt to make a reservation for later in the evening. We stopped in at 6:30pm. They had a 9:30pm reservation, so we took it. To kill time we decided to go on a hiking odyssey in search of a beautiful place to watch the sunset. We walked for a long time up and down random roads and hills with varying levels of success. We eventually ended up at the Michelangelo Plazza just after dusk. We didn’t get any great sunset shots but we did get some cool night pictures. Florence truly is a beautiful city at night.
At the restaurant, 4 Leoni, we both ordered Jody’s recommendation of the pear ravioli. It was great. Possibly the best dish I’ve had thus far on the trip. Florence definitely has better food than Rome. That or we are picking better restaurants. We once again grabbed gelato on our walk back to the hotel after dinner. We’ve now planned our day for tomorrow which will include seeing the David at the Academy (I can’t wait!) and the Italian soccer match (I can’t wait!). Tomorrow should be a great day and now I must sleep, so I’ll be able to enjoy it.
Until tomorrow,
Katy
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