Florence

The train ride to Florence was about 3 hours total and we only had to switch trains once so overall it was a pretty easy travel day. Our plan was to tour around Florence for 2 days with Carolyn & Hugh before meeting up with the Bike Vermont group at the Florence train station.

I had heard Florence was pretty neat and Karl had been there before with some friends and liked it so I was eager to see what it was all about. We had tickets to see David, Michelangelo’s famous sculpture, the first day at the Academia. It was neat and a lot bigger than I had pictured! The Uffezi museum was the other famous museum that Florence is know for. We did a guided tour around it for a couple of hours and then we were about museumed out. (It doesn’t take long for me ;)





We climbed a tower and saw a great view of the entire city. I got some good some good shots of the city below and the Tuscan countryside surrounding it. I couldn't wait to start our biking tour through it! At dinner one night, we decided to be brave and try the famous Florentine steak which was about 2.4 kilograms (almost 5 pounds of meat!) and about 3 inches thick! It was great and we all killed it. We had really good risotto one night and wonderful homemade pasta and wine, which has become a staple to us at this point. YUM!





Overall, Florence was very crowded and pretty over run with mopeds. It was hard to walk peacefully on any street in the city since there were no pedestrian only areas and mopeds would come tearing down the streets at any point. Two days was just perfect there. We were all getting anxious about the upcoming bike trip and wanted to see our bikes!

We also by this point haven’t had internet in almost a week. (A true vacation in my opinion but getting to the point where we need to check email, pay some bills, etc.) Wireless internet was easier to come by in Eastern Europe than Italy, which was interesting . I’ve been blogging on the planes, trains, etc. as we go and as soon as we get a good connection there will be lots of new pictures and updates!