We walked and walked and walked...

We actually DID wake up to our alarm this morning - hooray!

First things first... shower. Except after letting the water fun for more than 10 minutes, we discovered there was no hot water. Ugh. So we used the sink that's in our room to the best of our ability, but still with freezing cold water. We were out the door earlier than we thought (didn't actually know what time it was due to the lack of a watch still), and took our time strolling the early morning streets of Florence before our reservations at 9:30am. It was fun to see the hustle and bustle of people off to open their little shops, and smell the alluring aroma of fresh pastries in the bakeries.

We still arrived early at our reservation at the Galeria delgi Uffizi, but thankfully they let us in anyways. This place was huge. The building itself housed govenment officials back in the day, and the third floor of the gallery was/is home to an enormous collection of artwork that was owned by the Medici Family. I believe that there are over 3200 paintings and 1500 statues in the entire collection. The Medici Family ended up giving their Collection to the city on only one condition: that it never leave the city of Florence. So here it stays.

This was another place where cameras were not allowed. But the security wasn't too strong, so Cameron snapped away where he could. (I was always on the other side of the room when he took the photos, so he could take all the heat if he got in trouble.)

To me, the ceiling was the most amazing part of the whole gallery. I just wanted to lay down on the ground and stare (but we've been told that just isn't allowed). The ENTIRE ceiling was covered with artwork, not one part the same as another.

This is a Michelangelo.

Museum Fatigue...

Afterwards we headed out to cross the famous bridge, Ponte Vecchio.

It's very cool because the bridge is lined with jewelry stores. The kind of jewelry stores we couldn't even afford to go in. But very cool to look through the window.

I saw a lot of "some day" jewelry.

Then it was over to the Piazzale Michelangeolo for a panorama of the city center.

We climbed a lot of these...

A very beautiful climb.

And climbed more of these...

To get to this...

Such a view!

At the top was a replica of "David"...

And this guy playing the most beautiful music on his electric guitar,

but he was playing it like a piano. Very interesting!

The walk/hike over took quite a long time, so we hopped on a bus for the way back down.

We grabbed some lunch and walked and walked and walked some more. Mostly just admiring the beauty of the Renaissance time period, and me throughly enjoying all the "window" shopping. You know, Florence is known for it's leather goods and it's shoes! So you can imagine how much I really do enjoy it.

We came back to the hotel and took like a 2 hour nap - best nap of my life I swear.

Had a delicious 4 course meal for dinner:

Appetizer - Bruschietta

1st Course - Some kind of pasta with meat sauce

2nd Course - I had balsamic chicken with salad, Cameron had a pork steak with lemon

Lots of bread with oil/bals. vineger

Dessert - We decided to upgrade from regular Gelati to this...

So there's our seriously long day.

We leave tomorrow and head south for the Amalfi Coast.

Until then...

-Wendi