Rainy Firenze

Rainy Firenze

Florence, Italy, Europe

Today started with the best breakfast we’ve had so far on this trip. Hilton hotels really know how to do breakfast! We caught the 11am shuttle into town to have a look at all the sights in the light of day. It really is a beautiful city. The Duomo (Cathedral) is a breathtaking piece of architecture made completely of Italian marble.

We had read that the best view of the city is from the Piazzale Michelangelo on the south side of the river. We had a map and located the Piazzale so we started walking. We walked up a massive hill which brought us to a large olive orchard, but there was no view of the city because of a giant wall in front of us. We found the next road that would bring us to the Piazzale Michelangelo, and it started to bring us down, what seemed like, an even bigger hill! It wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the cars speeding up this single track road where we had nowhere to move to! We got all the way to the bottom of the hill and were then able to see the Piazzale Michelangelo, at the top of the next hill in front of us! We were not impressed, but we’d made it this far, so we had to keep going.

We finally made it to the top of the hill and the view was amazing! We were able to see straight down the river to the Ponte Vecchio, the Duomo and all the other landmarks in the Florence skyline. After taking some pictures, and catching our breaths, we headed back down into the city. We enjoyed some drinks and lunch, and then the rains came. Of course we didn’t have our umbrellas with us, so we got pretty soaked, but this seemed like a good time to get the shuttle back to the hotel.

We got back to the hotel, relaxed a bit and then had a walk around the hotel area to see what was happening. The answer was “not a lot”. This ended up being another relaxing evening at the hotel because considering the amount of lightning we were seeing outside, it didn’t look like a nice night to be holding a metal umbrella or walk around in the rain. Luckily I had put some episode of Rescue Me on my netbook so I was able to watch those, and Ryan was kept entertained by watching Pirates of the Caribbean in Italian and trying to read their lips. Ah, the joys of foreign TV!

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