Florence

The next morning we got up and headed out to check out the sights in Florence. Our first destination was the Galleria dell'Accademia, a museum housing a number of different works of art (most notably including Michelangelo's David.) While we waited in line there were a number of vendors walking around or standing on the side of the road selling various things. Many of them had identical sets of poster prints of artwork. One guy was walking around selling rainbow flags that had the word "PACE" (peace) on them. He was asking 20 euros for them. With some haggling and a little help from the guy in line behind us, Kevin bought one for 7.

Inside there were a number of works of art, mostly consisting of different pieces of sculpture. The hall leading up to the David held a number of partially completed works done by Michelangelo. This museum, like many places we went, had the idea that flying halfway around the world and then paying a good-sized admission fee to get in to see this stuff did not give us the right to take pictures of it. As you can see I thought those rules made total sense. It did make getting good shots in lower-light conditions rather difficult though (since there were picture nazis patrolling each room to prevent such horrible offenses.)
Another room was full of sculptures by one particular artist. It included a few different sculptures of people after they had died.


After we left the museum we headed over to the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, more commonly known as the Duomo. Basically, it's a massive church with a huge dome on top that makes it one of the most defining landmarks in Florence.




The interior of the dome was painted with an elaborate mural as seen below.


Outside the Duomo, we stopped at the stand of a local artist and I bought the picture you see at the left. We snapped a few more pictures of the Duomo, grabbed some tasty pasta for lunch (no scallopini this time) and headed back to the hostel to pick up our stuff and move on.

On the way to the train station, we made sure to hit up a gellato place one last time. After all, Florence is the best place to get gellato you know. Rick Steves said so.