Trip to Florence

We arrived in Florence via train again, but this train station was pretty cool. It was big and had the cool ticking arrivals board. But it was also raining :( We found our hotel but were also very wet when we arrived.

First we headed to the Duomo- Santa Maria del Fiore. The patterning on the outside is quite mesmerizing.

Then we headed to the basilica via a bunch of tents full of leather goods, so much leather!

The basilica had grave markers in the floors and monuments along the outer walls. Galileo was buried there.

A bit creepy but also everything was so detailed and ornate, lots to look at. Some of the grave markers in the ground were carved figures.

To help us ignore our soaked feet we went to Vivioli, Florence's oldest gelateria.

Oh man their pistachio was probably the best EVER!

For dinner we headed to a small place across the water where they had apertivo- which is a happy hour of sorts. You buy a drink for a certain price and then get access to a food bar, as much as you want. It was quite fancy too with cheeses, breads, shrimp pasta, steamed veggies. On our way back to the hotel of course we stopped off to finish up with wine, tirimisu, and panacotta.

The next morning the rain was over and we awoke to a woman who didn't speak english making us cappucinnos and serving us warm croissants. We wandered to the Ponte Vecchio which is the bridge below. All the little shops sell expensive jewelry.



these were everywhere, thought they were cute.

We went to the Uffizi Gallery (no photos allowed) which was filled with some pretty awesome artwork. Michelangelo, Raphael, da Vinci and more all had works inside. My favorite was seeing the Birth of Venus painting in person. So so cool to stand in front of something like that.

Then we walked over to the Medici Chapel where we saw the library done by Michelangelo. Ah seriously made me giddy to see some of this architecture and interiors in person finally.

 I was even allowed to touch things.

We wandered through the Mercantile Centrale to buy salami, cheese, and fresh bread for the train the next day. It was so lively and fun to be around all the people buying things, some weird looking meat things though too.

We bought a cute engraving print from this guy :)

Then we went to the Galleria Academia. We spent most of our time there just starring at the David statue (also no photos allowed) Couldn't get over how amazing it truly was. The details, it's grace, I swear if I touched it he could have moved. There was also a cool plaster sculpture gallery inside.

Then headed over the Ponte Vecchio, gelato in hand, to the Piazza Michelangelo.

This is where the original David statue was, looking over Florence, but now it's a bronze cast of it. It afforded a great panoramic view of Florence. But man we walked up a lot of steps to get there :)

Then we walked up farther to the San Miniato del Monte which was a great little church. The inside was spectacular with painted wooden beams and mosaics. Outside there was quite an amazing amount of terraces that were cemeteries too.

We tried to walk over to Boboli Gardens but apparently they were closing, so sadly that was the one place on our trip we really wanted to get to but didn't. Over all Florence wasn't our favorite stop, but it was still very beautiful.

Our other stops Istanbul Pt 1 - Istanbul Pt 2 - Venice - Cinque Terre

Trip to Cinque Terre

Next up we took 3 trains to Cinque Terre (5 towns). They are all along the Meditteranean Sea and built into the hills and up steep paths. It took us awhile to get to our hotel even though the town- Vernazza, was super small because we had to walk up 111 steep steeps where we finally saw a tiny hand written sign and then the note below.

It was so cute! The man showed us to our room which was near the very top of the town with a balcony overlooking the water, a cute 2 story space with a little couch and table. We just hung out on the balcony awhile where the sun came out, we couldn't believe we got to stay here!

Plus we've been getting really blessed with our weather, it had been rainy here all up until the day we arrived.

Then we headed back down to the main street to grab some infamous foccacia and enjoy the sunshine. We also took a walk to the beach that our room overlooked, to get there you walked through a crack in the rocks. It was so refreshing to be away from all the people and city noises.

entrance to the beach

this is from the beach, the balcony you see is where we stayed.

Then we trekked back up and above where we were staying to a bar our hotel owned where we had wine, beer and complimentary caprese. They spoke english well and were so so courteous!

The next morning we got up early to start hiking the towns. We started toward Corniglia. It was a pretty interesting hike, you followed red/white stripes to stay on the trail and climbed tiny steep steps.

When we made it to the end of the Corniglia trail (we were on the blue trail) a man stopped us at a blocked off exit and said all the blue trails were closed and we weren't supposed to be on them and he'd call the police if we were on them again. Oops, guess that's why we didn't see anyone else on that hike. So we wondered around Corniglia and then took the higher, and steeper red trail to Manarola.

some steps we walked up, thank goodness for the trail markers

The red hike got quite intense but finally when we were close to Manarola we started weaving through vineyards and getting great views down to the sea.

There we stopped for some also infamous pesto, because we had no energy and our legs were shaking. YUM it was seriously good.

Then we gave up the hiking because the red trails took a lot longer to get inbetween towns and took the train back to the first town Monterosso. We wandered around until the rain caught up with us and headed back to Vernazza

We ended the night at a small pizza place with a cheeky Italian owner and a carafe of wine.

It was great to get out into what is more of our comfort zone in the middle of our trip. The hiking and trees and spending our nights reading and eating chocolate wafers was really relaxing and serene. But next up Florence!

Istanbul Pt 1 - Pt 2 - Venice if you missed 'em.