Florence - Day 2

Our second day in Florence was spent trying to do everything that needed to be done in the city of Florence itself even though we have another night to stay here (I'll explain why at the end of the post)... so we hit all the highlights today and loved all of it. I definitely feel like we're getting to experience lots of different types of Italy. Having been in Venice (a very residential area), and now Florence, our day trip tomorrow, and then Rome... all are turning out to be very unique experiences... hopefully Rome will be the same way.

But anyway, back to Florence... we started the day with the highlight of the city, Michelangelo's David. I didn't think I'd really have a reaction to seeing it, but it was definitely one of those jaw dropping moments when you turn the corner and see it in front of you. It's such an amazing piece of artwork that you just can't stop looking at it. It's size, the amazing details, realizing that he sculpted it when he was 29 years old...

We weren't supposed to take pictures inside the museum, but we cheated a little... here's one of the "forbidden pictures":

From Florence - Day 2

After that, we visited Il Duomo... not the most amazing church we've seen thus far, but it definitely is massive (the picture I picked gives absolutely no scope of size or the rest of the building):

From Florence - Day 2

Here's the inside (a look at the ceiling):

From Florence - Day 2

We decided to climb the bell tower afterwards... our legs will never forgive us after this trip... it was 400+ steps up ;)

From Florence - Day 2

But the view from the top was amazing... I kind of love how all the buildings look similar from up there:

From Florence - Day 2

From Florence - Day 2

There are TOO MANY PEOPLE:

From Florence - Day 2

Our 2nd of 3 Davids of the day... at least we got to take our picture in front of this one:

From Florence - Day 2

We went into the Ufizzi museum after that... got to see awesome works like The Birth of Venus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus_(Botticelli)) and some early Leonardo DiVinci work (among lots of other stuff). They wouldn't let us take pics inside, but here's a shot from the inside out:

From Florence - Day 2

Our next stop was the Santa Croce church which is where some big names like Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Dante, and Galileo are buried. It's still pretty ridiculous to me that I can say that I stood feet away from someone like Michelangelo... here's his grave/monument:

From Florence - Day 2

This one might look familiar... our third David of the day:

From Florence - Day 2

(I think Florence has an obsession) ;).... We found this one at the Piazza de Michelangelo, which is at the top of a mountain overlooking Florence. Some amazing views:

From Florence - Day 2

From Florence - Day 2

By this point, we had tackled pretty much everything we wanted to see, so we wandered around and enjoyed the city... one cute thing we found was this place where couples come and place a lock on these chains with their names and date on it:

From Florence - Day 2

We were pretty exhausted today so we chilled tonight at a place for dinner that's just around the block from our hotel... turns out it was amazing. I was craving some bruschetta (apparently that's a specialty around here):

From Florence - Day 2

And that did not disappoint... it was so ridiculously fresh that it tasted like the tomatoes were straight off the vine. I also tried a 3 soup sampler of three different types of soup from the Tuscany region. The bean and barley (on the bottom) was my favorite. In the back you can also see JC's shrimp and pasta and he seemed quite happy with that:

From Florence - Day 2

On our walk after dinner, we walked over to the Duomo and got a quick night shot:

From Florence - Day 2

We're taking it easy tonight because we've been doing so much and because we're going on a day trip tomorrow... we're going to make a stop in Pisa to visit the Leaning Tower and then to either Lucca or Sienna to check out a less touristy area. Lots of train riding to do tomorrow!

Lauren & JC