20060430 - Florence, Italy

We arrived in Florence in the afternoon and took a taxi to our hotel which was on the Arno River a little way out of downtown Florence. We tried to make reservations at the hotel for the two primary museums we wanted to see in Florence: The Galleria Accademia (Michelangelo’s David) and the Uffizi Gallery (the greatest collection of Italian paintings). Unfortunately, we were too late for reservations on the next day and we were leaving the following day. (Our computer died at just the wrong time for us to make the reservations when we should have from the US.) That afternoon we decided to walk to downtown Florence and look around. We crossed the Arno River at our hotel and walked to the downtown area on the other side. We walked all the way to the Ponte Vecchio Bridge, a covered bridge with jewelry shops on both sides of the bridge street. It was incredibly crowded. From there we walked into the downtown area and ended up at the square with the Uffizi Gallery. We found a sidewalk café there so we ordered and ate dinner. While we were eating dinner, it started to rain. Luckily for us we were under an umbrella. Many other diners were not and the people in the square definitely were not. It was amazing how many umbrella vendors appeared and how many tourists disappeared into thin air with the rain. We stayed at the table until the rain stopped and then walked back to our hotel.
The next day we decided to take a Renaissance Walk through Florence with Rick Steves' Italy guidebook. We started out by walking to the Galleria Accademia. You have several choices in visiting museums in Florence: 1. you can stand in line (could be very long), 2. you can make a reservation, and arrive at that time, or 3. you can join a tour. Since we were not able to do #2 or #3, and we were at the Gallery, we decided to see how long the line would take. As it turned out it only took an hour for us to get into the gallery. I thought I saw a sign ‘no photos allowed’ but there were cameras everywhere so I took a picture of David. After the Museum we continued walking on the tour. We walked to the Duomo. There was a huge line into the Duomo and a much shorter one to climb the Dome (400 steps). We both started the climb but it was too much for me so Rich continued and I returned to the square. After Rich returned we continued the tour. At the end of the day we returned to our hotel, pretty tired from all our walking.
The next day we caught a train to Vernazza, one of the Cinque Terre Villages.