Tenth stop - Florence!

When trying to book a room for Florence, Steven couldn’t quite figure out why there was NOTHING coming up on the internet, when normally there are hundreds of options for a location! Upon our rainy arrival to the beautiful city, we discovered that it was FASHION WEEK in Florence! The lady we asked said that we should never have come during this week. Lesson learned!

































The hotel we ended up with the first night was way overpriced and didn’t have all the amenities they advertised, AND we had to walk outside in the rain to get to it. After a very long night of trying to get our heads on straight after the rooming ordeal, Steven was able to find us a guesthouse close to the train station and other essentials! Wonderful! We had to make our own breakfast, but luckily there was a grocery right across the street!

We had a 10:00 a.m. reservation at the Galleria dell’ Accademia, where my boyfriend David lives. He was looking fine as ever! I again had that indescribable feeling of finally seeing a magnificent piece of art in person, which was especially meaningful since Florence was the only place we were not able to visit on our trip three years ago. A tour guide, who I happened to be standing close to and happened to overhear, described it best when he said that the David statue is so beautiful that there really is no need to ever see another statue again. I couldn’t agree more!! He was absolutely magnificent! (No pictures were allowed of anything, so I could only get a couple to magically end up on my camera.)


















After the reservation at Accademia, we checked out of our room and dropped the bags at the train station. (Have I mentioned lately how much I love being able to do this??) As we were walking to the station, the dark clouds were moving in, steadily, but their intent was all too clear. While walking toward the exit, we saw the pouring start. After our first night in Florence, I had reached my breaking point with rain, so I was not looking forward to this cross-town walk, which normally wouldn’t be a big deal. Additionally, we knew that our shower that morning would be our last for three days or so, and I was not amped about getting wet and dirty…again. After much debate, we took our first taxi ride of the trip, and it was well worth the ten euro!

We knew we would be in Uffizi for a long time and decided we should get some nourishment, so we stopped at a little pizzeria with outside seating under a covered alley. Within five minutes, the sky completely opened up: thunder, lightning, and even huge hail!! The combination of wind and moisture allowed us to get a refreshing mist while eating lunch.


















The line at Uffizi took a nice chunk of time, but we didn’t think to make a reservation for this as well. Inside were very cool with paintings by Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael, including the infamous Birth of Venus. Unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures here either, and none miraculously ended up on my camera. Bummer. However, we could take pictures at the outside portion of the museum with many monuments/statues, which were absolutely beautiful! This is also where David’s twin is, the replica on the square (roughly same size).


















































































Time for another market and gelato stop, of course, then we hopped on our 6:30 train from Venice to Zagreb (Croatia). Hopefully this night train will be as pleasant as the last!