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Tuesday morning we woke up and after having our usual continental breakfast, headed back upstairs to pack up all of our stuff (which was quite the feat!). Then we headed out to catch the bus to the Termini train station. After successfully purchasing a ticket we had to figure out which gate to head to, which at first was confusing because our train was actually a train to Venice, not Florence but was stopping at Firenze (Florence) on the way.

Once we figured that out, we got on the train and headed to Firenze! It was about a 2 hour journey maybe a bit more, and I cropped an rotated my pictures from Rome the whole way up so that I could add some to yesterday's blog and you can now view day 1 photos right here!! If you have facebook, you can see the rest I just haven't been able to put them all in one album yet.

Once we arrived, we grabbed a quick lunch as we were both very hungry and then headed over to the tourist information office to get some maps and figure out how to get to our hotel. We used hotwire again which had been working well, but ended up in a Holiday Inn here that is quite far from the town center. It's still a nice hotel and all, but it's about a 20 minute bus ride.

After getting situated we headed back into town on the bus and embarked on another Rick Steve's walk. We stopped in for dinner at a quick self serve restaurant that was pretty good because alot of the other restaurants recommended in the book were closed during August. Apparently the Florintines don't eat this month. Then we headed out to il Duomo, a great huge and beautifully decorated Cathedral, and the baptistry across from it. Down Calzaiuoli towards the Orsanmichele, which is a a pretty church nearby. We stopped along the way at Festival de Gelato where I got some Frutti di Bosco gelato, which was amazing and refreshing in the heat.

From there we walked on down to Piazza Signoria, which has the Palazzo Vecchio - with a big castle like turret and has the replica of the Micelangelo's David outside of it and the real thing inside. Off to the side a bit of that is the Loggia Dei Lanzi which has a bunch of statues in it, including Benvenuto Cellin's statue of Perseus holing the head of Medusa. Then we walked through the Uffizi museum's courtyard filled with more statues down to the Ponte Vecchio. It's Florence's most famous bridge. It's lined with shops and is really very cool and Renaisance looking. The shops were closed at night, but the bridge was filled with people listening to a guy playing live music and singing. It felt very Italian and was a great way to end the night before getting on a bus back to the hotel.

I wanted to write about today to, but it's getting so late already I'll have to do that tomorrow on the train and just copy and paste it to my blog the next time I get internet!