David and the Duomo

After finally arriving in Florence, we made the trek to our apartment. What we did not know was that Florence doesn’t really do public transport because the city is fairly compact and walkable. The buses that they do have are SMALL. Being fairly optimistic that we could fit on the mini bus, Emma and I hopped on one with our massive suitcases, and we immediately realized that we made a bad choice. The two of us plus our suitcases took up half the bus, but all the Italian locals were really and nice and tried to help us prevent our suitcases from rolling around and hitting people (yikes!)

We were exhausted from getting very little sleep on the train, so we took our first day easy. We walked around the city and explored some of the main areas including Santa Croce, Duomo and Ponte Vecchio areas.

Photo on Ponte Vecchio overlooking the river. Can you believe how pretty this backdrop is?

The view from the top of the Duomo was stunning! Each direction and side was just as pretty as the previous, and my favorite thing to see were the hills of Tuscany off in the distance.

This morning, we woke up ready to tackle the main attractions of Florence: the Duomo and the Accademia to see David. After stopping for a necessary morning coffee for me (it was amazing, by the way), we explored the Baptistry, Belltower, and we climbed the Duomo. 463 steps, everyone. Even though that sounds like a lot, the view was beyond worth it.

Then, we went to find David at Galleria dell’Accademia de Firenze. We’ve found ourselves thinking that, despite the colder weather, we are glad that we went to Europe in the winter instead of the summer, and today reminded us of that again. Not having to fight through tons of people to see a statue or a painting has been nice in every city we’ve gone too. And it also means that we could get a good photo of David.

The biggest surprise in the Accademia, however, was a mini musical instruments museum! The music nerdiness continues! The collection of instruments came from the Medici family and included a ton of strings, a few harpsichords and some fun clarinets. We’re not going to say we liked this part better than the David because that would be slightly blasphemous, but we really enjoyed it.

Left: David in all his glory. Right: A peek into the musical instruments museum also located inside the Accademia.

We finally ended the day back in our apartment. Since the kitchen in our apartment is super cute and well stocked, we stopped at a grocery store along the way and decided to buy food to make for dinner. Italian grocery stores are the best, and our food turned out amazingly! We’re very full, very happy and very ready for our next day in Florence!

Our dinner of sausage (so amazing and everyone was buying it in the grocery store), veggies and potatoes with a tomato sauce, lingonberries (which America needs ASAP), yummy bread rolls and red wine.