Florence

Another night of the hard bed and flat pillows. I couldn't wait for my alarm to go off so I could get out of bed and get ready for the day! The owner of the bed and breakfast (who couldn't speak English) followed us to the car dealership to take back our rental car and then took us to the train station where we bought tickets to Areezo. From Arezzo we had to buy another train ticket to Florence!

Florence is famous for the statue of David. We should have went to see it first thing, but Kristel was distracted by the markets on the way to the Duomo (yes another one). This one though was actually very cool! The inside was the same, but the outside was amazing! After visiting inside and it looking the same we made our way over the see David. The line was long and moved about five meters every ten minutes. We spent about 45 minutes in line before we decided to give up and go get something to eat. We didn't have enough time because we needed to catch another train back to Milan. I bought me a five inch statue of David though, which will suffice. It's just a statue right?

Kristel and I decided to take a first class train ride back to Milan, which really didn't mean anything other than having our own compartment on the train. That was worth it in and of itself. Kristel slept most of the way while I kept busy doing a magazine of puzzles. Overall, I liked Florence although I had misconceptions about it. In the past when I thought of Florence I imagined something beautiful and the scene or topic of many movies and books. I think I'm finally coming to realize that real life isn't like the movies! The city itself was actually very dirty with a lot of gypsies. I now have a real-life first hand experience of what to imagine when somebody or something brings up Florence.