Day 6: Florence

Hello! On the 6th day of our 10 day adventure, we spent the entire day in Florence, and definitely put in a wonderful, full day of exploring and enjoying many famous and interesting sites!

We woke up very early (again, haha) for our reservation at 8:15 am for the Uffizi Gallery, which houses many famous works! These are all pictures of outside the gallery.

 While there were no pictures allowed inside the gallery, here are a few pictures from the internet to get an idea of what is inside.

 This is called the Birth of Venus, and it was painted in 1486 by Botticelli. It is perhaps one of the most famous works housed in the Uffizi Gallery.

My favorite part of the gallery was the main hallway that wrapped around the entire museum. The part I loved that really brought out the history nerd in me was that along top edge of the wall were all of these plaques (that isn't really the best word to describe them) of important European historical figures with their names, and it was basically like the Hollywood Boulevard of history, with all of the famous kings, popes, sultans, scientists, philosophers, etc!

 After the gallery, we crossed the beautiful and nearly 700 year old Ponte Vecchio on our way to Boboli Gardens at the Pitti Palace!

There are many more things to see, so click "read more to see the rest of this post (and lots and lots of pictures!)


The Ponte Vecchio looking lovely that morning! Looking back, I am in awe of how great all of our weather was throughout our entire adventure! I'm loving all of the blue sky and fluffy white clouds!

After crossing the bridge, we found ourselves at the Pitti Palace! This palace (palazzo in Italian) was built for the Florentine banker, Luca Pitti in 1458. About 100 years later, the powerful Medici family took over, and even later, Napoleon used this palace as a power base. And now it is a museum! When visiting, you could choose to see the inside of the palace or all of the gardens or both. Due to time constraints, we chose to see the gardens, since Kelley not only heard that the gardens were "better" from a friend who had visited Florence, but also since there was a statue she was related to somewhere in the gardens that we were looking for!

The Pitti Palace is definitely higher up that much of Florence, so you can look out over the rooftops and see the dome of the Duomo!

The gardens were gorgeous! We definitely made the right choice.

Check out the hieroglyphics!

I have obviously never been to Versailles, but the palace felt similar to pictures I have seen of Versailles, and it felt very grand.

Finally! A little modesty in Florence... :)

For some reason, I sort of saw a little bit of Katie in this goat statue.

This palace was so huge! There was this random room/cave thing near the exit that we investigated.

It's Kelley's ancestor!!! I think I now know where Kelley gets her good looks! We had a very difficult time trying to find it, and of course it was the statue next to the exit!

Some cool street art outside of the palace.

At this point, we were very hungry and it was lunch time! I don't really remember the exact day, but odds are we skipped breakfast or at most ate a pastry on the way to something. So, we went to The Oil Shoppe based on our recommendations! It is actually owned by Americans, so that was interesting, but the sandwiches were sooo good! I had a delish buffalo milk mozzarella, tomato, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar caprese panini, and Kelly had pesto chicken panini.

We had a little time to kill before we saw David at the Academia at 3:30, so what did we do? We went to GROM for gelato!! This place was super delicious and I was delighted that they make their gelato with organic and natural ingredients! I got nutella, raspberry and vanilla!

Next, we saw David and some of the other works inside the Academia. David is quite an attractive fellow. We weren't able to take pictures inside, so here is a picture of the entrance. We were happy to have reservations to get in early and not have to wait in the long line.

Next stop: DUOMO! It was completed in 1436 by Brunelleschi, and this has definitely been one of the buildings I couldn't wait to see since I first learned about it in my 9th grade world history class! It is amazing how big it is (above) since it couldn't even fit in one picture no matter how hard I tried, but yet every part of it is so detailed (below).

We climbed up 463 steps to the top of the Dome! Here are some of the views from rooms or the inside of the dome along the way!

My time abroad made me realize how much I love high up views! Between towers, cathedrals, mountains, etc, it made me wish there were more places in the US that you can find views like that. I suppose besides skyscrapers, Illinois isn't the best place to look for a varied topographic landscape.

Here is a distant view of the palace from earlier!

Here is a picture from the day before in Florence when we visited the 1,000 year old church.

We went to a place our hostel had recommended for dinner, and it was delicious! I ordered a pesto ricotta pasta and loved it so much!

After dinner, Kelley decided to stay at the hostel since she had a cold and wanted some extra sleep, so Elle and I continued with some more exploring. We found some interesting things!

It's a volcano! Just kidding, this was a park by where there were lots of locals, including adorable Italian children!

I wasn't really sure what it's current use was, it looked like possibly an aquarium or pool of sorts, but we found an old "castle" with a moat!

Very near to the parks, this looked like some sort of theater, complete with thrones! It is hard to tell from the picture, but the "stage" is sort of set up like bleachers.

And how did we end the evening? Gelato! Elle and I returned to GROM, and enjoyed round two of gelato. You may be thinking, Sarah, did you really get the same flavors as before? And the answer is no! While it looks similar to before, I tried three new flavors: strawberry, stracciatella, and dark chocolate! And it was equally delicious!

On the way home, we stopped by the outside of Dante's childhood house! Crazy that he was born in 1265 and how when he lived here he was just a normal boy. Who knew he would go on to be an amazing writer and one of the first to write in the Italian vernacular rather than in Latin?

Wow! I think I set a new record for the longest post ever! I hope you enjoyed it, props to you to making it this far! Hope you are having a delightful week, and that August is a month full of joy for you! :)