Florence

Florence was my favorite city. There was no metro system to learn, as everything was in walking distance. Unlike Rome, Paris, and London, Florence was soooo clean! It was beautiful. Even the view from our hotel room was enchanting. It was out of a storybook with the clothes lines, green shutters, and red roof tiles.

Our room was lovely. We even had our own bidet right at the foot of our bed. The toilet and shower were in a separate room that was shared with the rest of the floor. But it was a small hotel, and we never even saw anyone else, so the bathroom-sharing was no problemo.

Florence was home to the best geltato ever! We had our very first taste of it in Rome right across from the Pantheon, but Florence topped them all. It was the perfect mix of creaminess. We tried all sorts of flavors from tiramisu to mint to blood orange. I'm sad that we were to busy stuffing our faces with it every chance we got that we didn't even take pictures of it! Of course I couldn't have cared less at the time...the only thing that mattered was savoring the gelato before it melted in the Italian sun.

On our first day, we went and explored the city and came across the Duomo. Brunelleschi had to build the dome out of bricks due to its light weight compared to stone. He was commissioned to build the largest dome in the world and though that's obviously not the case anymore with new architectural technologies, the Duomo is still the largest masonry dome in the world.

I literally could not stop looking at it. Something about it just seemed so awe-inspiring. That's kinda cheesy--and not all of Italy was sublime and romantic and other-worldly--but something about the Duomo really spoke to me. I was so mad when I saw that Andy had taken this picture because it's, well, it's kind of weird (and I had burned my bangs with a curling iron in London due to a bad outlet converter, so they were poofy and frayed for a lot of our trip). But I didn't delete it because it captured my genuine wonder of the building.

After we explored the city (and ate our weight in gelato), we walked down to the Medici chapel. It was in a beautiful courtyard filled with replicas of famous sculptures.

That's the best photographic evidence we have of "David" and the others. The originals are housed in the Uffizi Gallery (which we went to the next day) and the Accademia, but they don't allow cameras. We even had to go through security where they make you check your bag...so no sneaking pictures...at either place.

Our next stop was Poncho Vecchio. It's a beautiful bridge that houses a ton of luxury shops. I was drooling at all the window displays. Jewelry stores lined both sides and I couldn't fathom the kind of money people dropped to shop there.

We loved the view of the river that ran through Florence so we took lots of pictures of it. We got really good at holding the camera out at an angle that put us both in the frame. Some turned out better than others.

Our last stop before we headed to Venice (I'm posting these backwards because of photo accessibility), was the Duomo at night. We had a tragic mishap at Versailles and our camera was dropped and subsequently...broke. We had to buy a new one in Paris and we spent a lot of the trip learning how to use it. The flash was a little weird, so we decided to play around with it in front of the Duomo.

Our first attempt was less than successful. I will have to put this into photoshop and see if I can lighten it.

The second try was a little better, but it still came across as too bright.

But there is a reason they say "third time's a charm."