got up at quarter to 5! ggrrr! headed over to florence. had the scariest incident with a guy on the train who watched me sleep and then stared at us the whole way. felt very uncomfortable then but once again we survived and made it to florence, the home of the medici family and botticelli's duomo. my first impression wasn't that fantastic because we werent in the prettiest part of town and when we arrived in our hostel nobody was there so we actually checked ourselves in but afterwards we made the most of the day and headed east to pisa for an afternoon trip.
the most surreal moment of the trip so far. the tower does lean and yes i got a corny photo of me holding it up...im sorry but its me, i have to do these things. the area where the tower, catherdral and dome are was beautiful as it was surrounded by the greenest of green grass and had a nice market running along side it. we got lost in the city as we just kinda headed towards the river arno but cos its so small we basically just gave ourselves a free walking tour of the whole city.
homewardbound for the night and up early the next morning to fit in everything that florence had to offer. we ended up being 2nd in line to get into the Uffizi gallery (u can end up waiting up to 3 or 4 hours sometimes) and saw primavera and the birth of venus by botticelli. they were incredible in real life. then headed over the ponte vecchio (a bridge which initially had butcher shops along it but now has goldsmiths because of the medici rule) and had a lovely italian cafe experience with fantastic coffee. walked all the way to piazzale michaelangelo where we got an incredible view of the whole city. it was here that i hopefully continued a flukes tradition of a photo in florence.
all the way back into the city centre we passed through the markets and into the palazzo vecchio where the florentine government was housed and saw the fake David. we then wanted to climb the Duomo, built by Botticelli, nothing else is quite like it, but it was a sunday so we couldn't and instead climbed the campanile, or the bell tower. 414 steps later we were catching our breath whilst overlooking florence.
obviously hungry after this we ate the apparent 'best pizza in florence', walked past the medici chapels and went to see David. Had an interesting account with the security guard at the gallery when the metal detector beeped at me. he asked me to striptease and then proceeded to sing something along the lines of 'you can leave ur hat on' while i took off my coat. gotta love these italian men, they just can't handle the blonde hair at all.
David was incredible. I didn't think it was going to be such an jaw dropping experience but it really was. the detail and his butt!!! we had to move on before things got uncomfortable so we headed home and went out for our night out in Italy.
found an awesome bar called josua's tree pub, made friends with paolo, the door bitch and had a great night. we stayed about 3 hours after closing time!
first impressions of florence not so good but really like the city now. a bit anxious about rome because of the pickpockt stories ive heard :S
