Bones, Cats, and Stairs.

Yesterday was our last day in Rome. We had done most of the touristy things by this point so we went out of our way to see a much quieter attraction — the ossuary at Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini. This is a small hallway in the church with 3 adjacent rooms as you walk through. Both the thoroughfare and the rooms are covered floor to ceiling with bones of the old Capuchin friars that used to live and work there. Some of the friars are lucky enough to be robed and hold various objects, although their heads look like they get propped up with more and more superglue as the years pass. All the other friars bones are used for the rest of the decoration so their arm could be on the roof in one room and their pelvis in another. Some of the dressed up friars still had a bit of leathery skin on it. It was really creepy at first so we waited for the two people behind us in the museum to catch up so we could go through together.

After the creepy bones we went to the old ruins which are overrun by cats and makes up a cat refuge where the reject cats go to be looked after and ready to find their forever homes (see previous entry). We saw kitties with 3 legs, no tails, missing eyes and ears but they all seemed to be loving life.

After gushing at the kitties we then went to get delicious lunch which was Neapolitan style pizza which was made with beautiful thick crusts. The seafood pizza as you can see needed a bit of preparation before it could be eaten.

We contemplated going out at night but then ended up sleeping for 12–14 hours instead ready for an early morning train ride to Florence. It took us through the Tuscan hills which were very foggy and misty!

We then got to Florence and thought there wasn’t much to see as it was very compact. That was until we got a couple hundred metres into the town centre and saw this beast — the Duomo.

Photos don’t do justice to how intricately decorated or vibrant it is. So of course the first thing we decide to do is climb both the duomo and the bell tower, paying 10 euro for physical torture (850 stairs later!) but the views were definitely worth it, this was basically the intro to us finding out that there are incredible views to be had in Florence, so long as you are willing to walk for them.

By this time it was 3PM and we decided to quickly go to the Accademia Gallery to see the original statue of David, only to find that it was shut due to a strike. So we quickly headed back to the hotel to use the wifi to find out how to get to the other art gallery Uffizi, and upon arrival learned it opened late on Friday nights and so we didn't have to rush at all. We saw various works of art (mainly paintings), some ranging from the 100BC up to the 1700's and busts made of various materials also dating back many centuries. The gallery itelf was almost a work of art with the huge hallways and exteria, with a beautiful room located in the centre called the Uffizi Tribuna.

Once we had finished in the Uffizi, we walked along the Arno River up to the Ponte Vecchio (translation from Italian: Old Bridge), which is notable for being an old stone medieval bridge which still has shops on it. Although it used to be mainly butchers, the stores are now all jewellers and souvenir sellers.

We then journeyed through the somewhat questionable looking streets up to the Piazza Michaelangelo and took in the absolutely magnificent sight of the city along with the sounds of two extremely drunk american/english tour groups.

Once we had spent enough time romanticising we decided to head back down to our hotel on the other side of the Duomo, on the way we went to Perche No again after having been there before going to Ufizzi, a gelateria known for its soy gelato which was very tasty. We also went to Zara for the first time on our trip which was AWESOME, Prue bought some jeans. I wanted to buy a scarf but we thought we’d try H&M first, which was a massive let down having seen Zara first, they also had a really nice cologne called Seoul which I’ll probably have to go back and get.

After that, our day was done and we decided to head home and sleep, the streets of Florence truly are beautiful in the day with the amazing architecture and maybe even more so during night with the culture exploding from the seems. We just hope the David will be open tomorrow…