Florence is soooooooo beautiful! It was possibly my favorite city we visited in Italy... possibly. On our first morning there we went up to the Piazzale Michelangelo for the best panoramic views of the city, according to our hostel owner. Apparently it's a pretty popular place, because even at 9 AM the place was packed with tour buses and lots of obnoxious tourists! Florence in general was kind of overrun by tourists - I can't imagine what it must be like in July and August!
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| What a view! |
We then dropped by the ridiculously ornate Duomo in the center of the old town (and only a block away from our hostel!). Spain's grand stone cathedrals were amazing, but at a certain point they all start to look the same - Italy's cathedrals sure didn't! The interiors were almost overwhelming!
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It's pretty much impossible to fit the whole cathedral
into one photo |
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| trying to be artsy |
The first time we tried to go inside we were turned away for wearing shorts - oops. That's one thing that's better about Spanish cathedrals - they let you wear whatever you want inside! By the way, isn't it a little bit hypocritical for them to consider us too "slutty" for their cathedral when their country is run by Berlusconi?!? Just sayin'...
Since we were in the home of the Renaissance, we hit up a few of the big art museums - the Uffizi Gallery, the Pitti Palace, and the Accademia. Unlike the rest of Europe, Italy is EVIL with its student discounts because they only apply to Italian students! Ummm, students are poor EVERYWHERE! So we definitely forked over a little more money than we had expected for admission...
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Outside the GIANT Uffizi Gallery - we could have spent all day in there,
but looking at art gets kind of exhausting after a few hours |
The Accademia is the home of Michelangelo's David! Due to all the hype, I was expecting the statue to be a bit of a let-down, but it turned out to be one of the highlights of the whole trip! It's just so awesome (in the original meaning of the word) and immense - everyone was just standing there staring at it in utter awe. They technically don't allow photos inside the gallery, but since no guards were looking....
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| Mwa ha ha! Foiled again, Accademia! |
And just to prove that Florence is indeed the ultimate city of art, check out the street artists!
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| Freehand chalk drawing - impressive, no? |
We went to the Ponte Vecchio - probably the coolest bridge EVER - to watch the sunset. The bridge has actual buildings on it, all of them high-end jewelry shops. Window shopping was fun... until we saw the price tags!
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| Lit perfectly by the setting sun! |
Europe has this weird custom where couples carve their names into padlocks and leave them in "romantic" locations (a bridge by Notre Dame in Paris, the Romeo and Juliet garden in Salamanca...), and lots of lovers have left their love locks on the Ponte Vecchio. Maybe I'm just not a romantic, but I don't get it. Isn't it a little weird to symbolize your relationship with a padlock? It seems to say, "well, I guess we're chained to each other FOR LIFE! You're stuck with me! Mwa ha ha ha!" But apparently I'm in the minority on this one. (Also, when people link their locks to other people's locks, does that mean they're in an open relationship or something?)
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Weird symbolism or not, I must admit the locks look
really cool on the fence! |
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| Sunset on the bridge! |
We found an amazing gelato place by the bridge - probably the best gelato of the entire trip! We kind of went there a lot... like three times a day...
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| Yummy! |
We took a little day trip to Pisa to see the leaning tower. It was a pretty city, but there really isn't much else to see there, so we went back to Florence for the afternoon. As Meredith said, we came, we saw, we... turned around and went back.
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| Approaching the tower! |
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We tried to do the touristy "holding up the tower"
pose, but it didn't really turn out, so we just took
boring photos |
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| It's not called the Leaning Tower of Pisa for nothing! |
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