Matt does not like to drive in small, narrow Italian towns.
Added to the stress of small and narrow are the ZTL restriction areas that pop up all over. Basically it stands for "Town center traffic limitation" So, you are driving around...trying to find your way, when all of a sudden a small ZTL sign pops up (looks like a little bullseye), and you think...wait, are we in the center, did we pass the barrier, ahhh! There are cameras, police, all manner of ways they catch and charge you with a hefty fine, because you don't have a special permit to drive in the town center. We have heard stories about unsuspecting individuals who have racked up a few of these babies as the wove in and out of ZTL areas. Then when they got home they received nice farewell gifts from Italia in the mail, in the form of hundred Euro fines. So, this made us very nervous to drive in Italian cities. Florence was no exception, and one of the worst we had heard. We were tempted to just train in from Pisa, but many locals we talked with assured us it was easy to drive too, faster to drive too, and no headache at all. So we tried it, and it wasn't so bad. We parked up at the Piazzo di Michelangelo, another tip from our friend Rick, because it was free, and it gave a wonderful over view of florence.
Firenza
Most of what we did in Florence was museums, and not many photographs are allowed in the museums. So, we don't have many pictures to document our stay in Florence. It rained, like we had never seen rain before. This was torrential down pour that soaked us all through in a matter of minutes. So, luckily, most of our sight seeing was indoors.
Above is this cute little elevator inside the Ufizzi museum.
There we saw such great works as "The Birth of Venus", several Di'Vinci's and Rembrandt (surprisingly) along with some Donatello. It was awesome, I am so glad we took the time to go.
eating a snack after touring the Ufizzi (which claims to be the first art museum in the world)
Next on our stop was the small, often overlooked, Galileo museum of Science.
Anya really wanted to go hear, and it was really interesting to see a piece of how this great mind worked. He definitely was a great visionary. Plus, it got us out of the torrential rains...
Galileo
Galileo's finger on display...interesting.
Anya doesn't think it is real :)
The Duomo
We didn't stop inside, we were wet, hungry and on our way to our appointment to the Accademia before it started raining again, so we just enjoyed the outside during the brief break in the rain
I want this door knocker, I think he is very majestic
Getting lost in Florence...
Goodbye Florence,
the sun decided to shine right as we made it back to our car and getting ready to head to our hotel.
Oh, well, it was still a great trip, and we got to see so many amazing sights and pieces of history.
I really enjoyed touring the Academia, and seeing Michelangelo's "David". I didn't realize how huge the statue is. My favorite part was seeing all the marble statues he had started, but never finished. It was really intriguing to see humans forming out of blocks of stone.
We could have done without the rain, and probably would have seen more of Florence without it, but I think we still did the best we could have and enjoyed it!
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