Thursday, June 19, 2014

Off to Venice at 300 km/h...

We are back on the Awesome Train headed to Venice!  We’ve had a wonderful time in Florence.  I love it there.   Everything there is so beautiful.  The buildings, the canal, the flowers, even the streets and sidewalks that are paved in stones.  Not great to walk or drive on, but beautiful.  There were people everywhere.  It was like New York City but prettier and with less cars and more side streets without muggers.  And older...  Way, way older.  

The sidewalks are so narrow in places that one person barely fits.  They also slant downwards and then back up at extreme angles without warning.  And the stones they are paved with are very uneven, to the point of being treacherous if you don’t look down constantly.  Which is difficult, because all I wanted to do was look at all the pretty things.  Both the architectural aspects of the city, and the things for sale. 
So most people walk in the street and hurry to the side when a taxi comes barreling down on them out of nowhere.  It’s amazing to me how many people don’t get hit by cars, Vespas, and bikes in Florence. 

Our hotel in Florence was beautiful, too.  There was marble all over the place.  Not to mention there were two bathrooms in our room.  It was awesome.  Except for my pillow, which was a flat rock…  But overall, the hotel was great.  It was very close to the Arno River, and only a couple minutes walk from the Ponte Vecchio bridge. 

We packed a lot of stuff into our two and a half days in Florence.  We saw the Accademia and the David, like I mentioned in the last post.  We went to the Duomo, the Uffizi, the Mercato Centrale, the Ponte Vecchio, the statues around the Bargello, and probably something else that I’m missing.  We did quite a bit of shopping, mostly for gifts for family members.  I even bought a couple small watercolors from a street artist!  There is this huge market outside the Mercato Centrale with booth after booth of Italian made items.  The amount of Italian leather there is hard to say, but it might be more than we have in the states combined.  It was amazing.

We are almost to Venice!
Ciao!


Jenna 

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