Florence

After a quick train ride from Bologna, we arrived in Florence (known to Italians as Firenze).

A beautiful city along the Arno River, the city is full of magnificent buildings and tons of art. So much so that some people have said it's unfair for a city to be so culturally rich.

We checked into our B&B, had a nice lunch of pasta and wine, and walked through the city to admire our new surroundings.

The main bridge, Ponte Vecchio, is closed to motorized traffic and consists of mainly jewelry shops:

We had forgotten how obnoxiously large European cars are...really, they need to take some tips from Americans.

And sadly, we never had a chance to take a ride on the short bus.

There were so many tourists! We tried to navigate around and made mental notes of the churches and buildings we wanted to see over the next few days. As with most buildings in Italy, no photographs are allowed inside so most of the photos will be "borrowed" from the web.

We visited way too many churches over the next few days and between Florence and Rome and don't want to bore our few readers...and frankly, we have kind of forgotten ourselves;( We'll list a few from each city and leave it at that.

The main church in Florence is the Santa Maria del Fiore, aka the Duomo. It's huge!

The inside:

We met an ex-pat from NYC who now calls Scotland home but spends most of his time traveling around Europe. He told us about a huge market near the train station so we decided to check it out. We were really sad to not have a kitchen because the food looked and smelled amazing. Instead, we settled for some fresh cherries and strawberries - everything just tastes so much better when it's actually in season and not picked green.

Huge legs of prosciutto hanging from the ceiling:

The afternoon was spent visiting Michelangelo's David - again, no pictures allowed but at 17 feet tall, the statue is huge and impressive in real life.

Gabriella, the owner of the B&B in Bologna, had told us about Il Latini, a little trattoria in the center of town that was a must for dinner. She said it gets pretty busy and to go early, so we arrived right when the doors open at 7:30pm.

And she wasn't kidding, the place was packed! But what an experience...greeted at the door, the owner sat us at a table for 4 next to another local couple, with a nice sized bottle of chianti for us to share. No menus, the waiter asked if we wanted to start of with a plate of antipasti. Sure, why not! He brought us out some beautiful prosciutto, another kind of salami, fresh buffalo mozzarella, and some stuff (liver, we think?) on toast. We didn't ask any questions, we just ate. The primi plati, or first course, was ravioli, and for our secondi plati, we had a choice of rabbit, chicken, lamb, pork, or steak. That's it, no other description. We shared the lamb with some amazing artichokes and chatted with our neighbors who gave us some great tips on what to do the following day. We left the restaurant a few hours later to see this - a swarm of people waiting to get in for an amazing meal. Definitely recommend if you ever visit Florence.

The following day, we ventured over to the Uffizi museum, the largest collection of artwork in Florence. Fighting the crowds in line for about 2 hours, we finally entered and spent some time looking around and admiring the paintings and sculptures. A bit overwhelming but definitely worth it.

We were told Piazza Michelangelo, a viewpoint at the top of a hill, had a spectacular view and we figured it would be a nice finish to our stay in Florence.

Our last sunset in Florence:

And to prove the world really is small, we met a girl at our last dinner in Florence who is from Encinitas (Steven's hometown) and her sister graduated the same year as Steven and from the same high school.