Firenze!

 25 October Friday

We rolled into the Firenze train station (Florence, Italy) at 6:18 am.  Nothing is open that early....except McDonald's of course.  So we went there and got some breakfast, and tried to wake up. We pulled out the map and planned the day!!  It was super nice to have so many hours ahead of us to do all the things we wanted.  We started by going to the Basillica de Santa Flore.  The Duoma on top is famous because the architect was chosen to design the dome, and he wanted to model it after the Pantheon.  He thought the Romans didn't use scaffolding to build the dome on the Pantheon, so he decided he wasn't going to use scaffolding to build this dome!!  So he DIDN'T.  But guess what...this had actually never been done before.  So he is a genius, a master!  He built one dome for the inside of the cathedral that is perfectly spherical, and when you are outside looking up at it it looks flat because of the weird perspective, so he built another dome to go on top of the first that is more egg-shaped.  So we got to climb up through this dome!  We climbed between the two layers!  You can see in the crummy pictures the two walls where we had to bend down to fit!!!  It was insane....we were the first ones up there because we were up so early, and we basically saw the sun rise over the beautiful city of Florence!  We stayed up there for a while.

first thing we saw in the train station...HEY, ITALIAN.

McDonald's...sorrry

first thing we saw out of the train station... sun just coming up

Haley and I found this photo booth!!! Black and white photos, soooo cool.  We got one.

German!?

Basillica de Santa Flore

the Baptistry of the cathedral

sunrise happening

starting the climb....view out some tiny windows

walking along a narrow walk around the top inside....this happens in one of Dan Brown's books somewhere

After that adventure, we started walking around the city!  Shops started opening, we saw our first glimpse of the beautiful gelato, and we headed for a MUSEUM.  We got distracted in the markets for a little while, and we got an early lunch at 11 (so hungry from being up so early!) in this fresh indoor market.  The streets are beautiful.

our lunch- a greek salad Haley and I split... 

...and this roast beef sandwich which was amazing

some church

GELATO

such a fake excited face. my apologies

We decided to come back around to the Basilica and go inside the cathedral.  This is the ceiling of the dome that we were walking right up next to earlier this morning!!!  SO beautiful and HUGE.

it started getting crowded outside! and WARM.  Like 70

inside the baptistry...

the word "Ambulanza" is written backwards so it shows up correctly in rear view mirrors! 

tired Rachel.  Haha she was our leader today. 

Vespo scooters everywhere! 

We checked into our hostel at 2 ish, and we took a nice 30 minute power nap to recover from our horrible sleep on the train last night.  It was perfect.   Our room has all six beds in it.  It is on this street--

this is a copy of the David, out in a square where it originally stood.

We went to the Uffizi museum.  It was hot, and closed in two hours, and we managed to see it all (quickly) in two hours!!  In there we got to see the famous works of Boticelli...The Birth of Venus, and Spring....some others.  That was the highlight of this museum.  And it had some great views out the windows of the canal!

this is a copy, not the original

We finished up at the museum at 6:35 (that was the closing time...) and the sun was just starting to go down!  We walked along the canal and over to this famous bridge with shops built into it.  It is full of expensive fancy jewelry.  We walked across it as the sun set, and then got some treats on the other side!!  I got a cannoli...traditional Italian guys.  A pre-dinner snack, I might add. 

more pretty gelato 

i really really want that ring in the middle... 

We sat on the wall of this bridge for a bit resting our feet around 7.  The view was amazing and so relaxing.  Something about the city at night.  We had a dinner reservation at 8, but we went to the restaurant and asked to be moved up to 7:30 and they let us in.

So our waiter gave us this "Chef's choice" meal.  We had three types of pasta (plenty for all of us to be full just after that course), a bunch of meat and potatoes (chicken, turkey, pork, beef, liver) for the second course, and then five desserts to share.  We also had unlimited wine (ok that was the deal, but instead we just got bottomless water and FANTA...hahaha).  It was amazing!  Classy, fancy, REAL Italian dinner.  We left full and happy.  It was amazing.  Oh, the desserts were tiramisu (my first time...so good!) and ....I don't know what that pudding was called actually.

this is what 11 hours of train riding and 3 hours of sleep and 12 hours of touring and a full tummy looks like

our awesome waiter!

We got to our hostel, just around the corner, around 10.  We tried to get on the wifi to check how our class scheduling was going...!  Super stressful!  There we some drunk Italian or Spanish boys in the common area just outside our bedroom.  They were being so loud and wanted to talk to us and they were banging on our door... "Ciao bella!!"  They wanted us to come out....luckily we managed to get to sleep.  Oh and the power was out on that whole floor so we got all situated for bed in the dark!!  YAY!