I Love Firenze!!!

I am ashamed to say I knew very little about Florence up until about a week ago. We arrived on Sunday evening the 9th of November - one day after Rick had completed his 100km race.

The train ride from Tarquinia to Florence proved to be very interesting. On the platform of Tarquinia train station we met Giovanni who boasted the Tshirt and medal of the race. I tried my very limited Italian with him and he was extremely patient and receptive to my attempt.

During our train ride I happily gave him one of my Canadian pins. In exchange he somehow saved Rick and I about $100E in a train penalty!!! The train station was closed in Tarquinia and there were no machines - so we thought we could buy the ticket on the train - wrong!! Thankfully Giovanni had our fine reduced form $50E to $5E. Then he even gave us a bottle of wine!

We parted ways at Pisa - where we caught the train for Florence. We survived the train ride and found the taxi queue outside the station. Finding the Davanzati Hotel was easy after that.

We were greeted very enthusiastically by Tommaso and assisted with our bags up a huge flight of stairs!! Eager to welcome us - it seemed our room wasn't ready - so we were upgraded to a suite!! beautiful and lots of room to feel comfortable in. We were invited later for happy hour that occurs every night with candlelight, great Italian music, some appies and great chianti!!

Really, I could get used to this. Tommaso also booked us reservations for dinner at Ristorante natalino!

The first day we spent just wandering in the old town and checking out the Ponte Vecchio, and so many of the small narrow streets that Florence has to offer.

The centre of Florence was very easily navigated on foot.

We found a very nice little place for pizza - which as it turned out became of our staples each day!!!

By Day 2 we ( or should I say Rick ) knew our way around. We easily made our way to the Academia where we stood and admired David for at least 30 minutes. There are very few places that you could feel comfortable looking at a nude with many others around - and looking at David was one of those times!! As we looked at the amazing sculpture - we continually heard the attendant say in English but with a very Italian accent "No Photo!" Of course there were those sneaking a photo now and then.

Closeby and another favourite landmark of mine was the Duomo - we just called it the Domo! what an amazing church. One thing about Italy they sure did churches well!

The streets of Florence were very runnable and each day we would head out in a different direction. I think my favourite run was often along the Arno river where we would eventually end up at the Ponte Vecchia - the bridge with all the buildings on it - which is simply a pedestrian bridge with shops on it. We were quite the pair - off running in all directions! what a great way to see Florence!