Florence

If it were up to me (Jill) - we wouldn't have left Venice. I loved it there. But of course after our 2 day stay it was onto Florence and endless Renaissance art. We took a 2 hour train ride straight from Venice to Florence and from there walked to our hotel, Hotel Alessandra. The hotel was situated a few floors up in a row house type building. When we walked through the doors we were greeted by Monti, quite possibly the nicest hotel concierge EVER. Brian mentioned that it was our (belated) honeymoon and Monti was quick to upgrade our room and promise us a special surprise in our room. We unloaded our bags in our room with a view of the river and were pleased to see that the room and bathroom were triple the size of our room in Venice. YAY!! After a few minutes in the room, Monti came in with a small bottle of champagne and a nice Firenze postcard signed by the hotel staff. It was very sweet and Monti made it clear that the champagne was for "sexy, sexy" time…..nice.

After enjoying our champagne we ventured out to our first museum, Accademia. This is the museum where Michelangelo's David was located. After looking at it, nothing much else in the museum measured up so we weren't there for very long. The David was much larger that we both expected measuring around 20 ft tall (on the pedestal). The details of the sculpture were pretty impressive, you could see the veins in his arms, the bones in his hands and of course….the family jewels.

From Accademia we walked to Ponte Vecchio, a large bridge that links the the north and south sides of Florence. Its mostly known for the large amounts of gold shops lining the bridge. There is a well-known tradition of putting a pad lock on the bridge to ensure your return to Florence. There were pad locks all over the place! After walking across Ponte Vecchio, we made our way to Pitti Palace.

Pitti Palace is the largest of the city's palaces and is known for the artwork it houses and the Boboli Gardens located behind the palace. One of Florence's longest ruling families, the Medici's lived here for a very long time and acquired much of the artwork in the palace. From the front, it definitely looked more like a fortress than a palace. The walls were plain, but intimidating and you have to walk up a large gravel hill to enter. The collection of artwork was impressive, but the Boboli Gardens were much more memorable. We got some wonderful panoramic shots of Florence from the top of the grounds. We enjoyed walking around and admiring the sculptures and beautifully landscaped areas.

Monti (aka best concierge ever) had recommended a restaurant near Pitti Palace to try for dinner. We took his advice and headed to 4 Leoni (4 Lions). We enjoyed some great seafood, 2 liters of wine and met a nice couple from California. We also saw pictures of some celebrities who visited the restaurant such as Dustin Hoffman and Gary Busey (sp?). Our 2 liters of wine set us up for a nice stroll home, but along the way Jill decided we needed to have a little wine bar crawl. Not a good idea….
At our first stop we enjoyed a glass of Chianti each and watched the season finale of House in Italian. We also began taking pictures which would provide the only way we could recollect the evening come the following morning. Here's what we remember, kind of…we may have stopped at 2 more wine bars, where we may have had spumante and a chocolate dessert (Brian recalls the spumante and Jill had remnants of chocolate on her fingers the next morning.) We both remember Jill jumping from some steps and falling on her butt. The pictures tell us that Brian kissed a bronze boar in one of the piazzas, Jill got a rose from some random American tourist and we had someone take a picture of us together (see above).

Florence day 2 = hangovers…yuck.
We miss breakfast, which is free with the room. Those of you who know Brian well know that this did not make him happy and was not an ideal way to start our day. After a quick stop at a coffee shop we made our way to the Duomo. The Duomo is the largest dome built during the Renaissance period. It was here that Brian informed me we would be climbing the 463 steps to the top of the dome. Luckily the line was short and it was relatively cool out. The steps to the top varied from spiral, narrow and uneven to straight and steep. At some parts the walls seemed to close in making it hard to navigate and coordinate with people coming from the opposite direction. We were both happy and almost hangover free once we reached the top. As grumpy as I was about the whole thing it was well worth the climb, as we got some great pictures of Florence (and had a mild sense of accomplishment for the day :) . After descending down the steps we waited in a short line to walk through the Duomo's ground level (church). Like many of the churches we'd seen so far it was beautiful.

We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed to the nearby Duomo museum. This museum had mostly sculptures and pieces of the Duomo that had been removed from the outside of the building. Lots of cool artifacts and artworks to see! Next we planned on going to the Medici chapels; known for the large collection of relics it houses (relics are preserved dead bones of famous religious people throughout history). We walked all the way across town and realized we didn't have enough cash to get in (only 3 Euro short)!

Cue what we have termed the ATM debacle. (short backstory here -We can only withdraw a certain amount of cash each day, having int'l cards. We tried an ATM earlier in the morning (at Deutsche Bank) with no luck. The ATM sounded like it counted our cash, but nothing came out of the machine. We didn't think anything of it until we needed to get cash after being short at Medici chapels) So…ATM stop #1 - the machine tells us we cannot withdraw money using an International card. We walk 10 minutes to find another machine. ATM stop #2 - the machine tells us we have already withdrawn our daily limit. This is news to us since we have no cash. Again, those of you who know Brian probably know how he reacted to this. (read as punching machine, cussing, and general disgust.) We end up spending about an hour on the phone with our bank resolving the problem, thus missing the opportunity to see Medici chapels. Instead we got some gelato and went to the Galileo Museum of Science (for Jill = BORING). But it made Brian happy so all is well :). One of the highlights of the museum was seeing Galileo's finger. Afterwards we enjoyed a quiet (wine free) dinner and called it a night.

Florence Day 3
We make breakfast - yay!! First stop is the Medici chapels. We see a ton of weird relics including an entire hand of some important dead guy. We also saw some teeth, femur bones, ribs, vertebrae, and other odd stuff. Then it was off to another museum - the Bargello. This all sculpture museum houses most of Donatello's works. We remember it more for the insane amount of Vespas parked outside the exit (see picture below).

Next stop was the Church of Santa Croce. Compared to the other churches we'd seen this church didn't look like much from the outside. However, once we entered we realized the importance of the church due to the tombs inside it. Santa Croce houses the tombs of Galileo, Michelangelo, Dante, Machiavelli, Charlotte Napoleon Bonaparte, and Florence Nightengale. A lot of the tombs were constructed of beautiful marble with detailed sculptures and inscriptions on them. Definitely worth the visit. Our last stop in Florence was the Uffizi museum. This has got to be the largest, most well-known museum in Florence. We spent over 2 hours looking at the best paintings and sculptures created by Italian artists during the Renaissance.

All in all this visit was heavy on religious art and history, but definitely worth it.