calling from some city...

Today started off with Scott frantically shaking me awake. He quickly explained that is was 6:10…the time we were supposed to be leaving the hostel for the train station. Not sure if his alarm didn’t go off, or he just turned it off somehow, but either way we did not get up at 5:55 as planned. As a result we had to rush out of the hostel and start running to make the commuter rain train to get us back to Naples. We did not yet have tickets to Florence, but I knew it was easy to buy same day tickets and we had planned on taking a 8:18 train.

Anyways we arrived at the train station to see the train pulling away. Awesome. We then had about a 30 minute wait for the next train, and I didn’t see how we would get to Naples in time. If not, we would have to either wait 2 hours in Naples for another cheap train, or take the more expensive trains that left before. Neither option seemed appealing to me. We got on the commuter train and luckily, it was a more direct route. It zipped us to Naples in about 45 minutes, instead of the usual 60-70 minutes. We ran upstairs, bought the tickets, and boarded the train with minutes to spare. We settled in for the long ride to Florence. Because we were taking a regional train with a lot of stops, we didn’t arrive in Florence until 1:45. The train ride actually wasn’t too bad; the only problem was we didn’t have time to get breakfast, so the only thing I had to eat was a granola bar. This was problematic because I have to take medication to travel, and you’re supposed to take it with a full stomach. So I felt really loopy and sleepy for the whole trip, and it’s not super pleasant. But oh well, we arrived in Florence.

We quickly found our hostel which is huge and really nice. We had reservations for  4 bed dorm but they told us we couldn’t be in the same room. So Scott took the room by himself but we really didn’t spend much time in the room anyways. He was also just across the hall.

We didn’t have a lot of time to explore Florence so we headed out into the city. We first wanted to see the Duomo. This was my second time seeing the Duomo and it’s just as impressive- the church is absolutely beautiful and looks like a castle. It’s white, with pink and green and other soft pastel colors, and the detailing is incredible. We explored the inside of the church and were equally impressed. We then decided to climb the bell tower because there was no line. It was 414 steps to the top, and actually wasn’t too bad of a climb. Once up at the top, we were treated to great views of the city; the best part of this view was that it included the dome of the church, which is impressive. When Michaelangelo was building the dome of St. Peter’s in Rome, he wanted to build a bigger dome but knew it wouldn’t be as beautiful as the one in Florence.

After we decided to try and see the statue of David in the Accademia. Once we got there, we tried asking a guard about making reservations for the next day, because there was a line. He said we couldn’t do that, but then opened up the velvet rope and just let us walk in- skipping the entire line! We were psyched for our good fortune. We only had an hour until the museum closed, so we headed straight for the David.

It’s easy to see why millions of tourists pay 10 euro to just see this statue. First of all, it’s massive. 516 centimeters, and the body is perfectly proportioned. The statue is just ridiculously impressive- it’s beautiful. You can see how Michaelangelo sculpted the veins in his neck, arms, and legs and how realistic they are. The statue just immediately makes you stop and say “wow” and want to admire it. Plus, he’s got a cute butt.

We saw the rest of the museum but nothing was super impressive. After, we headed to Piazzale Michaelangelo to see the sunset. The views of the city were awesome and it was really nice to sit down for an hour and just look out over the horizon and see the city of Florence stretched out in front of me.

We grabbed a delicious dinner at a restaurant near our hostel and got gelato (of course- it’s a Florentine specialty) and headed back to the hostel. It was only 11 when we called it a night, after being up since 6 am.