Firenze aka Florence
We got into Florence rather easily so we decided to go and do some sight-seeing. We went to the “Dumo”, it’s a big church with an even bigger dome. Hence the name DUMO. After taking some pretty good pictures we had a little dinner and took our train tickets to get validated at the train station.
On a side note the tickets were supposed to be validated on the first train that we were on, but the German train conductor didn’t do anything. The Italian ticket checker gladly gave us a 50 Euro fine for not having it validated. I told him that the first guy didn’t do his job and he literally shrugged his shoulders and took my Eurorail pass; so I paid him. He even gave me a recipe, how nice.
OK, back to Florence. Our hotel is awesome btw, Hotel Rex. After getting our passes validated we decided to hop the next train to Pisa. We ran back to the hotel to get the camera and just made the next train to Pisa. After riding for about an hour we thought we should ask someone about how long it would take till we got to Pisa. We thought it would be about a 30 minute train ride, but after I found an American family from New York I learned that the ride was a solid hour and a half. BTW it was getting late in the day. FINALLY we got to Pisa, I asked someone for directions to the tower and they told me it was about a 15 minute walk; so we were off. Pisa was a surprisingly easy city to navigate, as Florence has proven to be as well. We got to the tower at about 8 o’clock just in time to buy some tickets to walk to the top. Walking inside was crazy weird, every once in a while there were signs on the wall saying what degree the tower was leaning at. They started at 1 degree and went to 4 degrees. And 4 degrees seemed like a lot the time. After Pisa we went home and went to sleep. The following day we had more places to visit.
We got into Florence rather easily so we decided to go and do some sight-seeing. We went to the “Dumo”, it’s a big church with an even bigger dome. Hence the name DUMO. After taking some pretty good pictures we had a little dinner and took our train tickets to get validated at the train station.
On a side note the tickets were supposed to be validated on the first train that we were on, but the German train conductor didn’t do anything. The Italian ticket checker gladly gave us a 50 Euro fine for not having it validated. I told him that the first guy didn’t do his job and he literally shrugged his shoulders and took my Eurorail pass; so I paid him. He even gave me a recipe, how nice.
OK, back to Florence. Our hotel is awesome btw, Hotel Rex. After getting our passes validated we decided to hop the next train to Pisa. We ran back to the hotel to get the camera and just made the next train to Pisa. After riding for about an hour we thought we should ask someone about how long it would take till we got to Pisa. We thought it would be about a 30 minute train ride, but after I found an American family from New York I learned that the ride was a solid hour and a half. BTW it was getting late in the day. FINALLY we got to Pisa, I asked someone for directions to the tower and they told me it was about a 15 minute walk; so we were off. Pisa was a surprisingly easy city to navigate, as Florence has proven to be as well. We got to the tower at about 8 o’clock just in time to buy some tickets to walk to the top. Walking inside was crazy weird, every once in a while there were signs on the wall saying what degree the tower was leaning at. They started at 1 degree and went to 4 degrees. And 4 degrees seemed like a lot the time. After Pisa we went home and went to sleep. The following day we had more places to visit.
Today we went to the cat-walk around the inside of Dumo. Our legs (and everyone else’s legs) were dead after walking up 463 or so steps. Being that high in the air didn’t scare me until I really started to think about it. Because the piece of stone you are standing on is only about 2 feet wide and about 4 or 5 hundred years old (at least). After the cat-walk we went up more stairs to the outside of the dome over looking Florence. It was one of the most beautiful/scary things I ever experienced in my life. I was glad Gusto was there with me for it. After Dumo we hit the museums.
First on our list was the museum that houses “David”. You aren’t supposed to take pictures of him, but I was able to ninja some without getting caught. David was awesome and probably like 20 feet tall. Next we went to Uffizi museum. Stephanie said that it was supposed to be the best museum in Italy. There were a lot of paintings by famous artists like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Botticelli. Outside of the Louvre it was the best museum I’ve been to. After the museums we did take in a little shopping in a plaza by the Leather school of Florence (which I have some good pictures from).Now its about time for dinner and then I have to pack for Rome tomorrow. Our train leaves at 11 am and gets in at about 12:20. Wish us luck.
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