Firenze

Florence,

It is a little dirtier than expected. Much more city like than Venezia. BUT also very beautiful. We took a train in this morning, The eurostar. it was super fast. Made it to florence in about three hours. Beautiful countryside but a lot of houses like california. As you get further out there are older more classic typical italian homes. So after we got off the bus we walked across a bridge and found our Novella. It is three stories up and our room is huge. Not much of a view cause there are refacing the building all we see is scaffolding. But the room is great. we have a fireplace, a big bed, beautiful REALLY old wood floors and the bathroom is brand new.

Went out for the day and explored. Ate our first pizza at a resturant close to the duomo. Pretty good but the wine was better. Went into the Duomo. it was huge I mean really huge. I took so many pics. I paid 6 euro to go up to the dome where you can look over florence. Oh my gosh. I cried again. It was amazing. The million stairs up and the million stairs down were well worth it. They were the exact stairs that the painter who laid on his back for 10 years while painting the inside of the dome took to get to his self made scaffolding in the 14th century. Absolutely breathtaking. They are frescos and amazing. not enought time to elaborate.

There is much more to this day but I will stop here. We ate dinner, met two new yorkers and talked with them for awhile. great fun. tomorrow it is the Uffizi and more. I will post again soon. Love you
Kim