We left Venice this morning after having spent the perfect amount of time (2.5 days) there, I think. Just enough for ample meandering and planned sight seeing. Any more and we’d just have been retracing our steps. Look kids, Big Ben, Parliament.
It’s a two hour train ride from Venice to Florence. Along the way we sa… ZZZZ. The time difference is catching up to us.
We got to Florence around noon and walked from the train to our AirBnB, which is spitting distance from The Duomo. It just doesn’t seem real, like crashing at the foot of the Giza Pyramids or something. The city built up around it makes the ancient building feel like it fell out of the sky and life just kept soldiering on around it as if nothing had happened.
After checking into an AirBnB that looks out of an episode of HGTV’s Tiny Homes (Sarah’s accurate remark) we wandered across the street to climb the tower next to the Duomo… because, again, that’s the world we’re in right now. Crazy. It’s 460 steps to the top of a nearly 800 year old monolith built in sheer defiance of the tools and technology of its time. Want to get some ridiculous shots of Florence while taking painfully honest stock of the shape you’re in? Giotto’s Bell Tower is your jam.
Later in the day we met up with a teacher from Sarah’s school who also happened to be in Florence that day, go figure, and did the thing I’ve been dreaming of since we decided to come to Italy… sit outside, drink a ton of wine and eat meat and cheese boards until we’re bursting at the seams. def: very full, but, yeah, still totally have room for gelato.
Ah yes, and we did something similar earlier in the day involving a cured venison plate and some cheese/pear ravioli. Holy schnikies that was good. Nobody in Venice was mean or rude, but the folks in Florence have been much warmer and friendlier. It’s safe to say that this city is all the things we’d hoped it would be, though I have no doubt it still has some surprises for us. Stay tuned.
