Florence

After Venice we visited Florence.  You could immediately tell this was going to be much different than Venice.  While Venice seemed very old world, without even any cars in town, Florence was very much a modern city, but not too big, which is why I think hubby liked this stop the best.  He also said, after we visited Rome, that Florence felt safer and more high class than Rome, and was his favorite of all three cities we visited.  It still had a Tuscan touch to it, but nothing as drastically out of the ordinary as Venice.  Because it was a regular city, this was our first chance to experience Italian driving.  We were all very glad we didn't have to drive here.  It wasn't as crazy as I've seen in movies or TV, but way more than we wanted to deal with, we stuck to walking when we could and glad we didn't get a rental car.

Hubby thought the anti-mafia building and the tiny bus were funny.

We arrived in the afternoon and set off exploring and enjoying the sunshine as we walked along the river.  When the wind wasn't blowing, it was much warmer than Venice and a welcome change.  Walked a street near the river but were disappointed to find out everything was closed up.  And when I say closed up, I mean metal shutters rolled down over all the windows and doors, so you can’t even window shop.  We asked the hotel about this and found out that first of all, we weren't in a part of town that would have anything for us; and second, most places were closed between 1pm and 4pm for “lunch.”  We had better luck when we went back out after 4 and found a church where FIL attended an afternoon service, the high-end shop area of town, and the famous bridge.  The bridge looked kind of interesting from the outside, but turned out to be just another extension of the shopping center, and the sides were lined with jewelry shops.  Hubby enjoyed seeing all the fancy pants shops, even though we had no intention of even entering one. 

I didn't have any good shots of the famous bridge, but this was a beautiful view of the river!

The next day we headed to the site hubby couldn't wait to see: the statue of David.  Did you know it is supposed to be David from the David and Goliath story, or that it is 14 feet tall?  I didn't either.  I was shocked at how big it was, I tried to take a picture with hubby in the foreground for perspective, but it still doesn't do it justice.  We were extremely lucky no to have to wait in a line to see this, as the guide book had many warnings about it.  There are some advantages to coming to Italy in January I suppose.  The same museum that houses David also had a whole section on how the marble statues were made.  I had no idea they made a plaster version first, then transferred it to marble using guide marks on the plaster and a t-shaped measuring tool.  Kind of cool!

Near the museum was the Hotel Casci, which is owned by part of my FIL’s family.  We had to go see the family hotel!  Unfortunately, it was closed for renovations, so the sign on the building was all we really got to see.

The other site we wanted to see was the Duomo.  It was a cathedral completely covered, inside and out, with pink, grey, and white marble.  It was an amazing sight for the marble alone, but had a beautifully painted dome as well.

We spent the rest of our time there just recuperating and walking around town, during which we got to experience rain and snow.  It was sunny when we arrived, got very cold the next day, and in Rome we heard thunder and saw hail, so we experienced pretty much every weather pattern while we were here!