Blisters on my feet.......we walked and walked and walked today. After eating a delicious breakfast at out hotel, Hotel Giglio, we were off and running. Well, not literally running. We began our day at the Museo Galileo. Which since a lot you don't know how close are far away that is, I will tell you. It is all the way across town. It was a nice walk all though the crowds were already building. We went in the museum and spent a few hours inside. It was amazing and since Mark teaches science you can probably guess how happy he was to see something he enjoyed. Usually I am pulling him into churches and art museums.
After we went to that museum we wanted to take our Florence Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tour. We kept walking and walking and walking and walking and we still couldn't find one stop to get on the bus. I was getting exhausted and Mark was getting a little, hmmm...how should I say, impatient with me. Finally we found a stop on our map where we knew the way (from reading the signs). We decided to hike up to the Piazzale Michelangelo. Oh my gosh....there were so many step to climb to get to the top. I was really thinking that we weren't going to make it and that that would have just been wasted money. We lucked out though, we made it to the top! What a view we had, although we didn't take long to look. We wanted to find this “green” bus zone. After waiting for over 20 minutes the bus came. We were in luck – they were running very late because of some bus issues so we got to have our ticket validated for 48 hours instead of 24 hours. Woo hoo! A freebie more or less.
We road the bus for the full 2 hour tour and saw a lot of sights. We decided to get off on the stop after the one we boarded, hoping to avoid all the steps. Well, we avoided the steps but we ended up walking for over 30 minutes until we got back into our part of town. What an excursion.
The Ponte Vecchio was a sight to see. It is a very historic bridge that was not destroyed during the bombings of the war. It survived and is a famous landmark. There are stores on both sides of the bridge that sell gold, gold, and more gold. Wow! If only, if only......
We decided that we were starving since it was already going on 5:00 and we had only eaten breakfast. We went to a cafe near our hotel. My meal was almost to delicious to describe. We had a half of liter of vino bianoc della casa , I had the most delicious meal of spinach and ricotta cheese ravioli with butter, sage and cheese. It was so light and the most unique flavor. Mark and I couldn't even find the proper words to describe it. It was so light, so flavorful and just indescribable. YUM!!!!! Mark had some pasta dish...nothing like mine. He did say it was good though. After dinner we walked around some more and then finished our day off with some well deserved gelato. I love the fact that the Italians walk all over and their gym is built into their everyday life. Very smart.
Tomorrow we are getting up very early to hit the Uffizi gallery. Hopefully we will get in. This will be our last chance to see it. We head to Pisa for 5 ½ hours for a day trip and then we go to Umbria on Wednesday. Please let me get into the Uffizi. It was closed today. (Bummer). Stayed tuned for more of my adventure across Italy. I am having a blast and love to listen to people speak Italian. What a beautiful, beautiful language. Ciao!
