A Day Trip to Florence

After being properly fed and rested the night before, we were ready for another try at a train. This time to Florence. This train was at a more reasonable time in the morning, and there was no need to meet up with a guide. Therefore, there were no issues.

Our first stop in Florence was the Florence Cathedral.

There we climbed to the top of Brunelleschi’s Dome. And it was quite a climb! The staircases were narrow and mostly spiral. At one point, a person in front of us seemed to be in some distress and needed to take a break in a tiny alcove off to the side. I have no idea how they would have gotten someone down who was completely incapacitated. I did okay going up, but I was a little worried about coming down. If you recall, I needed to be supported coming down the Spanish Steps. But the narrowness of the stairwells helped here. I was able to put a hand on each wall and support myself that way. (Was thinking of you Deb!)

When we got to the top of the dome’s interior we were able to look around at the painted ceiling.

David tried to call our attention to “an arrow going up that guy’s butt” somewhere in the ceiling. I tried to call his attention to the signs all around us that asked for silence in both Italian and English. Neither of us were successful in our attempt. I finally told him, “Your mother is going to throw a lightening bolt down through that hole at you if you don’t stop.”

From there, it was a surprising amount of additional climbing to the top of dome’s exterior where we could see Giotto’s Bell Tower. With our tickets, we could have climbed that as well. We did not.

After that, we didn’t have a well-defined plan for Florence. Throughout the day, Dave kept turning to Nicole and asking her “What now?”

Nicole kept on answering, “Dad, this is not my city.”

We decided we wanted to see two places: Piazzale Michelangelo and the statue of David. Unfortunately, they were in opposite directions. We decided we would walk to Piazzale Michelagelo and would take a cab from there.

There we saw some more roses, climbed a bunch more steps, shared a variety of paninos (sandwiches), and paid a euro to use the toilet. Notice from the pics that we are on about the same level as the Dome.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a taxi, so we started hoofing it over to Michelangelo’s David stopping for gelato along the way.

This may or may not have been the gelato place where David accused a woman of pickpocketing me. I can’t quite remember what day or which gelato place this actually happened, but it did happen, so I’ll mention it here. He ran over to the woman yelling, reached into her bag, and asked “Mich, is that yours?” while about to grab her wallet.

I answered “No.”

And then apologized to the woman.

Heather witnessed the incident and was mortified.

Mortified to the point where we were all crying-laughing.

Now, I guess I shouldn’t just pick on Dave. I did a couple things that day that I found embarrassing. One was accidentally buying an extra ticket to see the statue of David. (6 x 12 is not 84.) Meagan, who found me staring at the extra ticket at one point, told me to let it go and enjoy the exhibit. However, as we exited the Gallery, I turned in the extra ticket in an attempt to get my 12 euros refunded. The Italian cashier was a little grump and threw the euros at me.

Also while in the Academia Gallery, I kept seeing signs mentioning a piano, so we hunted around for it. Then I realized that ‘piano’, in this context, was the Italian word for floor. The signs were just telling me what floor I was on.

We were all tired.

When we got back, Dave asked Nicole where we were going to have dinner.

She picked out a place that she had been to before, but when we showed up, the place was empty. We were wondering if we were ahead of the crowd since it was only 8 pm. Once seated, we started noticing fruit flies. Quite a number of them. And Chris is the type of person who uses extreme force to smash the little buggers. Dave made the executive decision that we would leave.

As we exited the restaurant, Dave turned to Nicole and said “Where to?”

Heather nearly took his head off.

Nicole did find another place which turned out to be excellent. We ended the meal by sharing three desserts. And all was good.