Floored by Florence

Florence was pretty nice. After our problems getting there, we slowly fell in love with the city. We felt that Florence had more to offer. It was more like a "real" city than Venice. Venice is so much fantasy and tourism. Florence had romance and wonderful art but more to explore on the streets.

On our first day in Florence we decided to go to the Science Museum/Galileo Museum. It was pretty cool. They had tons of old instruments - real mercury thermometors and barometors, old surgical tools, science experiments and tools used to prove the scientific theories we take for granted today. They had some of Galileo's things including his telescope and his fingers! The story is that when Galileo was proven to be right (that the earth orbited the sun), his body was dug up from it's simple burial place and he was given a proper, honored burial. His students handled the coffin and one reached in and broke off one of his fingers. The middle finger of his right hand. It's only appropriate that he is now flipping everyone off considering how he was treated (as a heretic). But when we got there there was also a thumb and an index finger. I'm not sure what the story is there. Perhaps it's the same and the student actually pulled off several fingers. Unfortunately we couldn't take any pictures in there. Italy doesn't like photos in ANY of their museums we found out.

After the museum, we walked across the river, found a place for lunch, and discovered our favorite gelato. It's a nutella gelato with big swirls of nutella in it. SO GOOOOD! Then we continued our walking tour of the city, went to Galieo's house, and went to the Duomo, saw Michelangelo's house, a bunch of old churches, squares dotted with statues, etc. Here are the photos:

Me on the bridge on our way to Galileo's house (I'll fix the bright background when I get home and have access to Photoshop)

Andrew in front of Galileo's house.

This plaza had tons of statues in it.

I'm sure this has an official name, but we don't know what it is. Regardless, it's cool.

Ditto on this one. Very dramatic.

A very large, 1-legged pigeon.

Another Medusa statue. Gotta love 'em.

Medusa from another angle.

I think this was part of the Uffizi Gallery.

This guy had a really intricate beard.

Ready to gallop into battle!

Il Duomo!

A square where we took a rest after our walk. The sky was so beautiful!

More sky!

This guy was giving us the stink eye. What's his problem?

Another church.

I really liked the street lamps in Florence.

Andrew having fun with motion blur.

Us in the square. I'll lighten us up a bit in Photoshop.

Our dinner that night was our best in Italy thus far. We even took photos of our food like real tourists:

Delicious bruchetta.

Close up.

Noodles in a mushroom sauce (our first course after our appetizer).

Andrew's plate - mint ravioli! The pasta was lightly flavored with mint and filled with a delicious ricotta, then topped with a cream sauce.

My plate - veal with an herb sauce. Delicious!

On our second day we went to the Accademia Gallery to see the main man of Florence. The David! I like art well enough. I'm not a mega fan. I'm not even all that knowledgable. Too much art can bore me. But The David... It's amazing. I think it would be amazing to anyone. You can't just glance at it and then walk away, though. You've got to stand or sit there for a bit and study it. It's utter perfection. And it's large. Not one bit disappointing! Here is the highly illegal photo Andrew took of it:

We also went back to the Duomo on this day because the weather was clearer and we didn't realize that I didn't get a photo of myself in front of it. It's one of my favorite European landmarks so we HAD to go back.

I'm going to have to photoshop this a bit because I'm just a dark shadow in front of it. But I'm still glad we went back for the shot.

We wandered around Florence a bit more, went to the train station to buy our tickets to Rome, had dinner, then went back to our hotel to get our things. We left the city that night to go Rome. We were sad to leave but excited at what was in store for us. The next time we visit Florence, we want to really explore Tuscany - the olive and grape vineyards.