Block #11 - Florence

We arrived in Florence around lunchtime, leaving us plenty of time to explore the city in the afternoon. Armed with a map obtained from the hostel reception desk, we set off in search of the major sightseeing locations in Florence. First, the Duomo, the main cathedral in the city, and it is well worth the title. I'm pretty sure that “Duomo” means cathedral in Italian, but what people talk about “The Duomo,” this is the one they're talking about. Well, this one or the one in Milan. The Duomo was amazing first because of its size, and secondly because of all of the incredible tile works around the place. There was one particular pattern on the floor that was really really cool, but at the same time kind of gave me a headache. This picture of it encompasses about an eighth of the design, and doesn't do it justice at all.



The real thing was so much more incredible than what you can see here. The whole thing was so precisely constructed and inlaid, and the illusion so complete that even standing exactly on top of the design it was hard to believe that the floor wasn't curved or something. I'm running out of superlatives to use without repeating myself ad nauseum, but I was totally impressed by the whole thing. It was hard to get decent pictures of the floor patters because they were so big, but here are a couple tries:





The outside of the cathedral was equally – if not more – highly decorated as the inside, with patterns and carvings and statues and spires and flourishes crammed into every possible space all the way around the cathedral.



The front especially put in mind of a wedding cake, sort of.



Walking around Florence after the church, we saw a couple fun things that I wanted to share. First, where would you buy wine in Italy other than the



Plentywine shop! Where there's always plenty of wine. Also, and completely unrelated, Florence's public transportation system consisted entirely of bus routes, utilizing buses of various sizes. Our favorites were these fun size buses running around everywhere.





To top off the day, we hiked clear across the city and then straight up a hill on the opposite side of the river from the bulk of the city. The reward for our efforts?



Well worth it, I believe. I hope you enjoy such landscape shots, as there will be a few more of them in the upcoming posts. Lots of towers in Italy. Ciao!