Day 21: Florence

Il Duomo
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It was quite hard to wake up this morning.. we think the toll of the trip is finally getting to us.  We finally woke ourselves up at around 9:30 and lazily got ready.  Since it is a Monday, all the art galleries are closed in Florence.  Instead, we headed off to Il Duomo/ Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore.  It was an intensely hot day.  We stepped outside and started dripping in sweat.  We realized there was an incredibly long line just to get into the cathedral, so we found a little pizza shop that also sold sandwiches and bought two sandwiches to go for breakfast.  Quite delicious.  We stood in line for the cathedral first.  The lines are only long because they only allow a certain amount of people in there at a time for crowd control reasons, so the line actually moved quite fast.  The interior was HUGE.  It's still the fourth largest cathedral, apparently.  Too bad we haven't been able to get too many good pictures of the interiors of the churches we've been to (either poor lighting or no cameras allowed).  Downstairs of the cathedral is a sort of archaelogical museum.  Not too long ago, they found the remains of an ancient church underneath the cathedral.  It was pretty amazing.  Although, people must have been very short.. all the doorways were so small!  We then headed on outside and waited in the line to actually climb the dome of the "duomo".  All 463 steps.... on about a 90 degree day.  When we reached the top, you could actually see people's sweat dripping off of their faces.  We enjoyed the Florence city view, with the Tuscan countryside in the background.  It was definitely worth the climb.

After climbing all 463 steps
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After all that climbing, we were pretty hungry.  We walked and found a little restaurant called Taverna Divina Commedia.  The prices were good so we decided to try it.  Good thing we did!  Great restaurant!  TJ ordered the farfalle in pesto sauce while Melissa ordered the seafood gnocchi.  Wow!  We even ordered a margherita pizza to share (they still thought that was weird since everyone gets their own pizza here!).  We then walked across the Ponte Vecchio.  It was so cool.  Shops of jewelery line the oldest bridge.  The shopowners even live above the bridge.  After crossing the Arno river, we headed to the Piazzale Michaelangelo.  It's a square they built in honor of.. duh.. Michaelangelo.  We had to climb a freaking mountain to get there.. but, boy, was it worth it.  The view from up there was amazing.  You felt like you were on top of Florence!  We headed off back to Piazza Signoria since the Palazzo Vecchio was there.  Palazzo Vecchio stands as Florence's city hall and it is also a museum with works by Leonardo da Vinci and Caravaggio decorating the interiors.  It looks like some sort of big fortress and castle.  It's the most amazing city hall we've ever seen.  After enjoying Palazzo Vecchio, we had to head on to the train station to do an errand.  We reserved our train tickets from Florence to Rome.  When that was done, we decided it was definitely dinner time.  After searching a bunch of good restaurants that were recommended to us, we ended up at Le Mossacce.  This is a hole in the wall restaurant where diners sometimes share tables and sit awkwardly close to one another.  The food is so worth it though!  We both ordered spaghetti (TJ in a tomato sauce, Melissa in a meat sauce).  Then for our secondi piatti (main dish), Melissa ordered the osso bucco and TJ ordered a porkchop.  We couldn't have been fuller and more satisfied!  It was time to roll our full selves back to the hotel to prepare for the next day....