Florence

Ponte Vecchio - Florence's most famous bridge

On Tuesday we took the high speed train to Florence. It was an 90 minute trip through some beautiful countryside. We arrived and checked in to the hotel and then got a quick lunch at a bakery down the street from our hotel. We wandered the city and took in the sights. Florence is much smaller and compact then Rome and we noticed a lot of people speaking English which took us back a little. I finally found a cannoli, which is one of my favorite Italian treats. We went into the Church of San Lorenzo which was started by Michelangelo. Then we toured the Medici Chapels which were the family's crypt. They also had some Michelangelo pieces but were not nearly as interesting as I thought it might be.

The Duomo - funny enough all the Florence churches have almost the same facade

After that we headed back to the famous Duomo hoping for a shorter line and we were rewarded with that. We toured the cathedral with it's Gothic facade and cool dome. We wanted to climb the dome but the line was long so we will try again later. It looked like rain so we headed back for a nap at the hotel. We awoke to a thunderstorm! We don't get storms in Norway (even though we get more then our fair share of rain) so we were excited to see some lightning and hear some thunder. After that excitement we headed to dinner at a cute little place recommended by our hotel called Vecchio Mercato. It didn't disappoint! We had the famous Florentine steak and I had ribollita soup. Both were amazing and I am definitely going to try to recreate the soup at home.

The rainbow after the storm - this is the view out our hotel room window!

Tomorrow we went to Sienna for the day- which will have it's own post. But before we left we got up early and headed to the Duomo to climb the dome. There was no line and we headed right up. There is something like 480 steps but it was not as treacherous as I thought it might be but you do get to be inside the dome looking back into the church along with being outside the dome so it was well worth the workout! After that we caught a train. That evening we returned and had another great dinner at a cute place called Antico Fattori which was Michelin rated! Jason had an amazing Tuscan tomato and bread soup and some great sausage and beans. Chris had a really good mushroom ravioli and was adventurous and tried the pesto tripe which was actually pretty good. I had the ribollita soup again (yum) and a pasta with a wild boar sauce which is another Tuscan speciality. And of course we shared a nice bottle of local Chianti wine. We then walked off dinner and found some gelato!

Inside the dome - the Last Judgement from 1570

The climb up the the final section of the dome is vertical!

The view from the top