Saturday July 18 - Florence

We woke up a bit late and we couldn't really do any sightseeing before our 12:30PM train to Florence. We got our stuff packed and headed over toward the station, saw the opera house on the way and then hung out at the station for a a bit before getting on the train.

We arrived in Florence and immediately headed out, to get a feel for the town. Florence has a great feel to it. Seems like an old city, but lively and bustling with tourists. There are a million gelaterias, ristorantes, and shops. There are so many teeny tiny shops I think they must be overjoyed if they sell 2 items per day. Contrast that to the USA where stores have to be huge to survive. There is very little car traffic in the city center and mobs of people so Florence has almost a block party atmosphere.

The Duomo is very impressive. I can hardly imagine building that huge church (~1300 AD believing that you could find an architect to build the dome, when no one had built a dome since 120 AD (the Pantheon). You really get a feel for why this place was the origin of the renaissance. Bruneleschi completed the dome in 1426.

We ate dinner at a little fast food dive... food was terrible but cheap. 20 ($28) euros compared to ~60 euros ($84) for a normal lunch/dinner tab a sit down restaurant. We just couldn't imagine being here for a month spending $75 - $100 for every meal -- so we had to find a way to eat cheap when we're staying in a hotel.

We have gelato a couple times a day though which keep the kids going. That is only $14 for 4 small cups. Seems like a bargain.

We scoped out all the museums today and have out plan in place. The hotel did not make our reservation for the Uffizi which needs to be booked 30 days in advance. We will have to try to stake it out early tomorrow. It will be very disappointing if we leave town without getting in. We also will try to get into the Accademia which has many important works (I can't believe I'm using that phrase) from Michaelangelo and Botacelli. We will try to climb the duomo, picnic in the michaelangelo paliseo and see a few other museums. I would like to take the kids to the Leonardo DaVinci hands on museum and Galileo's tomb, but they charge for everything here. I guess we do the same in the US, we're just not consuming it every day.