Day 14, Florence, October 3rd


Woke up and headed immediately to the train station.  Took an hour long train ride to Piza, saw the cathedral, which was nice.  Climbed the tower, Which was fun and super disorienting to go up!

Ate lunch there.  People say Piza is dangerous, but I felt more threatened in Paris.

Got back at 4:00ish, which was way later than we wanted.  Went to Santa Croce Cathedral.  This awesome cathedral has the tombs of Galileo, Machiavelli, Marconi, and Michelangelo.  There was also a dedication to Dante, which was cool.  The main edifice, with Jesus hanging from the cross, was undergoing renovations, so the whole area was filled with scaffolding.  Looked like a modern art exhibit inside a church.

Had an early dinner at a great and cheap sandwich place.  We each ordered one sandwich.  We were so impressed that, upon finishing, we both immediately ordered the exact same thing!

Then went to the Uffizi Gallery where we saw The Birth of Venus.  There was other food stuff there, fairly extensive.

It was about 6:30 by then, and we ran out of things to do.  I have a new, intense pain in my Achilles tendon (as well as a new blister) so we headed home.

Then, we had a lovely evening relaxing. We had some beer, took off our shoes and read!  I finished pillars of the earth - maybe it's just coming off of Game of Thrones' wonderful complexities and surprises, but the characters felt too one dimensional, the problems too easily solved.  Also, the last few hundred pages, dealing with Thomas Beckett, were totally irrelevant to the main story line.

I digress.

It's my b-day tomorrow!  Send me an e-mail instead of calling, and we can chat when I get back.

Tomorrow we are off to Rome, our final city!

Location: Florence, Metropolitan City of Florence, Italy

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