Florence.....in one day can be chaotic, rushed, crowded, and much better with a beer in hand. After our first night at the Poggerino winery we were officially in heaven. If any of our friends come to Tuscany and want to stay in the country I would insist upon them staying at Poggerino. It's nothing short of perfect. breakfast was homemade by the owner with fresh eggs made to order. All of the vegetables came from their garden and it was such a great start to the day in their garden overlooking Tuscany. We decided to take a bus from Greve (30 min drive) to Florence and headed out around 9:30. After the drive and bus ride we arrived in Florence around 11:30. Our first stop was the main square and the Duomo, or Brunelleschi's dome. We have realized since the Colloseum that paying extra to skip the lines is totally worth it.....so we did this again and missed probably 45 min of waiting. So off we went up the hundreds of steps again....to the top of a dome. This dome was the inspiration for the dome at the Vatican....very cool. It's was hot, tiring, but as usual totally worth it at the top. We had a bit of a scare at the walkway around the dome ( inside...think walking around in a circle, looking down at the floor of the church so high up) a guy 5 people in front of us collapsed. He must of had a panic attack, seizure, something. Very scary in such a tight place. After about 10 min he was up and we were moving again. Very surprising he was a young, fit looking guy.
After the excitement of the Duomo we headed of in search of the Mecca......David. Now....an interesting fact...did anyone know that Bryce got an A in Art History at Western??? We are walking around Florence and I'll be honest.....I know little to nothing about art. And here Bryce is.....teaching me all kinds of things...I'm like where did this come from?? Go figure!
Anyway....we found David. The line was shorter than expected and we waited while enjoying a beer (lifesaver) and talking to some nice people from Canada. After talking with them we realized we had just met the Anne Woolard of Canada.....without Norm of course :). At last we were off in search of David. Man oh man did we find him! Who knew that statue was HUGE! It was very incredible. We took some illegal pictures that you can enjoy now :). Bryce got very good at taking pictures illegally...he was angry he didn't break the rules at the Sistine Chapel (like the Canadian Anne Woolard did) and wasn't going to let it happen again. So.....check that off the list....David was awesome. We rounded off our trip to Florence with a walk by the Uffizi to see the long line and then back for some shopping and found the bus home.....we had dinner at the winery at 7 so were rushed to get back.
That night we had planned to join some guests at our b&b for dinner prepared by the owner. This started at 7:30 and we got back to our room at 2 am.......did we have fun? Um......yes. We met some nice people from Chicago and 2 British couples that were nothing less than hysterical. Anyone ever heard of toasty soldiers?? We had the greatest company and such great conversation. The owner made a comment to me the next morning that pretty much summed it up....about the number of wine bottles she found on the table in the morning....I'm pretty sure it outnumbered the number of people! What a great ending to the great day....it was very sad to leave such great people and beautiful scenery......but off to Montepulciano! I'll type about our travels today soon.....we visited several great cities in Tuscany but we are off to dinner now!
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Hi Mandy,
ReplyDeletethanks for the picture of David. I'm so glad you have Bryce along as your personal docent! Florence is jam packed with all sorts of people and art, but that has always been its appeal to me. Very different from the beautiful countryside. So glad you didn't get art "fatigue". By the time we got through the Uffizi, we were at fatigue, so not so bad you didn't make it through. There is always next time :-)
Enjoy your last couple days.
Brenda