The day after we went to San Marino we decided to finally make a trip down to Florence. I don't know if we can say we really "saw" Florence after this trip and to be honest, it wasn't near the top of our favorite places we've been so far. However, we didn't see a lot of the really famous stuff that is there and we had a pretty cranky baby most of the day, so that might have contributed to our overall impression of the city.
The first thing we happened upon while walking down the street was the Medici chapel, which was actually one of the things I really wanted to see. I remember learning about the Medici family in my sophomore history class, and we did some gruesome reenactment of someone in the family getting murdered during church. I have no idea if it was this church, but the name and at least a vague recollection of the story stuck out to me.
Here is the outside of the church:
There was a courtyard in the middle of the Medici complex and Michael found a kitty, so we had to sit and watch him sleep for awhile. He was much more entertained by this cat than anything we saw in the treasury or library.
The first stop was the treasury and Donatello's tomb. You weren't supposed to take pictures in there so Robbie only snuck one in the treasury. I was surprised by how plain and unceremonious Donatello's tomb was. It was very plain and just kind of a slab on the ground as opposed to a lot of the really fancy gravestones and crypts you find elsewhere in Italy.
We also went up to the library. Robbie got a better view of this than I did because I was baby-wrangling and had to pretty much walk in and walk back out. But there was this fancy staircase, some cool mosaics on the floor, and some neat old books.
We left the Medici Chapel and walked a little ways towards our lunch spot and caught out first glimpse of the duomo! It was huge and beautiful. Michael was starving so we had to move quickly past and get lunch.
Although we were in Florence, we were hungry for American food and went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Besides watching the cat, this was the happiest Michael was all day playing peek-a-boo with himself in the mirror while wearing a fedora. He was pretty cute.
After lunch we walked down to the Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge and saw some monks on the way:
The view from the Ponte Vecchio:
I had read about this famous bridge with all the shops on it and we were pretty underwhelmed by the whole thing. Like most of Florence, it was completely packed so all you could really do was shuffle along and wait your turn for a little gap to take your picture. The shops didn't look like they had anything worth fighting the crowds to browse though, and we pretty much walked onto the bridge and walked off as fast as we could while trapped in the sea of people.
We walked to the Palazzo Vecchio where there were a bunch of people and replicas of some famous statues. This was at least nice to have a bit of wide-open space!
The next stop was the duomo. I love churches and really wanted to make it inside this one, which is most famous for Brunelleschi's Dome, an architectural marvel for its time made of over 37,000 tons of brick. I loved the outside of this cathedral. It was really stunning with the green/red/black colors and all the lines and details. And it's huge. Most cathedrals are large, but this one seemed quite a bit bigger than some of the other ones we've been in.
The inside was beautiful as well, but I was expecting it to be more detailed and ornate like the exterior. It was very light and open, but didn't have a ton of decoration like the cathedrals in Siena and Ferrara.
There were some cool frescoes on the inside of the dome:
We walked through family quickly and walked around the perimeter of the church to see if from all sides. It was impressive all the way around!
There was the option to purchase tickets to go up and walk around the top near the base of the dome, but the line was wrapping all around the side of the church and we didn't think we could wait that long with Michael.
With that, we decided we needed to head home. We didn't make it to any of the big museums to see the artwork at the Uffizi Gallery or the David at the Academia. I would also like to go back and see Balboi Gardens and the view of the city from Piazzale Michelangelo. There also looked like there was great shopping there, if you had time in sightseeing for that! We left feeling a little claustrophobic because everything is so close together and there are so many people. We still have more to see in Florence, but I think we'll wait to go back in the off-tourist season and hopefully will have a better experience!
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