Firenze (Florence)

Early Saturday morning Daniela and I took the train to Florence. I loved Florence, there was something to see everywhere we went! However, I’m not entirely sure why Sandra Bullock wanted to go there so badly in While You Were Sleeping, it was pretty and art-filled, but not necessarily the most picturesque or beautiful city I’ve seen. But it was a wonderful day! The weather was perfect, actually really hot. Later in the afternoon as we were getting ready to leave it rained for a few minutes and it felt really good. Because it was a holiday weekend, the city was pretty crowded! We had a full day of walking, but it was very enjoyable. The following is an outline of our day in Florence:

• Got lost.
• Found the Galleria dell’Accademia which houses Michelangelo’s David. We saw a line so we walked to the end. After walking down the street and around the corner we decided that although David is a lovely work of art, he wasn’t worth the LONG wait.
• From there we went to the Duomo. The line there was relatively fast. After about 30 minutes, we were inside. The inside was very pretty, I really liked it! We saw the outside of the Baptistry before heading off to our next destination.
• We wound around the streets until we found the Uffizi. The line there was even longer than the one at the Galleria dell’Accademia! We really wanted to go inside though, so we got in line. We were prepared to wait for quite a while, even though it was time for lunch. We jealously watched the people who had made reservations breeze through their practically non-existent line. After learning that the line would take at least three and a half hours, we decided to bypass the Uffizi and come back another weekend after making a reservation.
• The Uffizi is right by Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence with an expensive little shopping district.
• Once across the river we went to the Palazzo Pitti and saw, among other things, the Boboli Gardens. There were incredible! They’re huge! It started getting really hot while we were there and we walked around them for a couple hours. There were some amazing views of the city from the upper parts of the city. We also got to see the porcelain museum and il Museo delle Costume. We got to see parts of the actual clothing worn by Cosimo de Medici. But I loved the Boboli Gardens, they were absolutely beautiful!
• Our next stop was the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Cappella Brancacci. On our way we got some lunch and stopped at a little supermarket to buy water and an apple. It was a delicious lunch. We ate on the front steps of the church of Santa Maria.
• Inside the Cappella Brancacci there are frescoes on The Life of Saint Peter. I had studied some of them in my humanities class so it was really exciting to see them.
• We started making our way back to the train station. Florence had an open market and tons of the streets were lined with stands selling things. We looked at lots of them and did a little shopping. It started raining while we were there and it was kind of refreshing.
• We got to the station, found our train, and headed back to Siena.
• The train was a little behind schedule. It left on time but due to a sudden thunder storm and extended stops at deserted stops just outside Siena, we arrived a bit late.
• We finally got back to Rita’s and were starving and exhausted. Rita had dinner ready for us and we were very grateful. We had a lovely dinner of penne pasta with tomato, chicken, little sausage things, salad, bread, tomatoes with fresh mozzarella, and we finish every dinner with a pear! The pears are always perfectly ripe (except for the hard one Daniela had the other night) and they are delicious!