Florence for the day!

This morning I woke up bright and early at 5:30 to catch a 7:45 train to Florence! We arrived in the city around 9:15 and decided to check out the line to see The David.

The line wasn't very long, so we decided to wait - little did we know, the line would move very slowly. We finally entered the museum around 11:30 and saw the famous sculpture. It is just so much larger than anyone can expect! Although no cameras were allowed, I was able to snap this blurry one (as proof that I was there).











We also stumbled upon this David replica. It looks much smaller, given that it's located in an open piazza, but other than that it's essentially the same. I'm showing the side view here, since I wasn't able to get that shot of the actual statue.

Now for a little art history...it's nice to see this statue in a space more like where it was intended to be viewed. Here we have the possibility of seeing how Michaelangelo wanted the light to hit the statue.








Afterwards, we were starving so we set off to find a restaurant that Lisa (our art history prof.) had recommended. I ordered pasta for the first time since being in Italy, and decided to try the classic fettuccine alfredo. It was great!







Rumor had it that the San Lorenzo market was the place to go to shop for leather goods. Lisa had given us a place to go, and after asking, we found it. Immediately, the owner, Adriano, asked us how we had heard of him. We said our professor had recommended his store, and he knew right away we were talking about Lisa. Given that she sends all of her students there, he gave us a great discount - 50E off the bag! As you can see, bag shopping was a great success!








We perused the other goods at the market - here's a shot of the crowded street. Of course, we're still in Italy, so there is also a beautiful old church in the background.









Next, on to see some of the sights! First stop was the Duomo. We went inside, but decided against paying 8E to climb to the top of the dome. After seeing the Duomo, we made our way down to the river to check out the Ponte Vecchio (famous walled bridge).






Surprisingly, the entire bridge was lined with jewelry shops! By that time, it was around 3 in the afternoon and we were hot - it was at least 90 degrees out - and tired. We met up with others from our program and set out to find a bar to watch the Germany vs. Argentina game. After wandering around and failing at finding an open bar, we eventually made it to one that was only open for the game. We arrived at half time, only to watch Germany dominate Argentina 4:0.

Tired, we found a place to grab a bite to eat and then went to the grocery store to stock up on cookies for the train. Ready to go home, we went to the train station early and were able to change our tickets and get on the 8:40 train home, instead of the 9:10. All in all, it was great to see Florence, but I'm really glad it was just a day trip. All of the great sights required an admission fees, and those that were staying the night faced a lot of problems with booking hotels/hostels, etc. Going to Florence will definitely help me appreciate Rome. I now see how nice it is to have restaurants and great gelato spread out all over the city. Florence was also much more touristy than Rome, so I was happy to get back to Rome :)

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Gelato (modified)
Ok, so I have a confession to make. I did have gelato in Florence. I tried caramel again - it tasted like ice cream. Not to say that this is bad, it definitely wasn't even close to comparing with my favorite Haagen Daz dolce de leche, but it really wasn't the gelato I was looking for. Unsatisfied, I got a cone from McDonalds at the train station. This did the trick. I got my ice cream fill, and now I'm ready to go back to the good ol' gelato in Roma!