Florence Home of the Reinessance

If you are looking for a romanitc place to stay, other then Cinque Terre I would have to suggest Florence Italy. This is the birthplace of the Reinenssance, the time period that brought some light into the dark ages. The weather ended up holding up for us pretty well even though it was cloudy and windy it never rained. We would have been ready with our rain jackets however. Our first day was spent exploring the streets, we saw the church of the Medici family who controlled Florence after the black death plague in about 1348 ad. We walked right into a pliazza that held the grand Duomo of Florence the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. This dome is a gothic style duome started in 1296 but not finished until 1426ad. This building is so beautiful on the outside that going inside was almost too much. The facade (including the entire building really) is decorated with pink, green, and white marble all delicatly layed around paintings representing bible scenes that hang above each entryway. We then continued to walk to the Ponte Vecchio which is actually a bridge that crosses the Arno river and connects Florence to the other side. This bridge is a shopping street in a sence but there is only one type of purchase made, that purchase is manly gold. All the shops are jewelers selling huge amounts of expensive jewelry from gold, emerald, perls, silver, precious stones and more. This was one of the only bridges not bombed by Hitler in WWII due to its great wealth. We grabbed lunched and walked up a huge hill overlooking the city of florence. We were sitting in a piazza known as Michelangelos piazza. There is a copper replica of Michealangelos Davids statue. (we would have gone to the museum with the real David but since there are about 10 replicas about the city of the same thing, we decided it was not worth it since we had seen enough art at the Vatican.) The view was enough for more then 1000 words however, we could see al of Florence, the Duomo stuck out like a sore (but beautiful) thumb right in the center, along with some other castel towers and churches along the strip. The Arno river ran right below us and the our left were Michelangelos gardens. This was a great place to sit and take in the romance, and beauty of the city, a great place for lunch. The wind began to pick up and so we headed back to our hostel for the evening.