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After waking up in Venice (and sad to be leaving the beautiful city ... I am in love with it), we took a short 2 hour train to Florence. We stayed at the Hotel Cestelli, recommended by the Lonely Planet and the owners Allysio and Asumi could not have been nicer. They gave us tons of recommendations of places to eat and so we headed out to explore. First we walked to the Plazza Michalangelo, which is actually across the river from Florence but has spectacular views of the city. It was well worth the walk, but my camera broke just as we were getting there! Luckily, we still had Gordon's - which was the nicer of the two. We walked back across the river via the Ponte Vecchio, and Gordon was amazed at all the jewelry (although I joked that I would be happy to borrow his credit card!) For lunch, we ate at one of Allysio's recommendations and since the menu was in Italian we ordered blindly. But it turned out great! We managed to get some sort of fennel sausage with spaghetti and sweet cheese raviolo (ok, those were a little weird). After filling ourselves on pasta, we hiked over to see the Duomo. Since the lines were a >3 hour wait, we skipped the Duomo but hiked up the Campanile - the tower next to the Duomo. A mildly strenuous hike up, it was well worth it ... the views of all Florence were spectacular.
That evening, we walked through the open-air market and did some souvenier shopping.
One note - I will pause here and list all the flavors of gelato Gordon and I have tried on our trip to Italy. It is 18 unique flavors!
- Strawberry
- Raspberry
- Coconut
- Mango
- Mint
- Green Apple
- Melon
- Pear
- Lemon
- Cherry
- Blackcurrant
- Papaya
- Grapefruit
- Limoncello
- Mojito
- Kiwi
Our favorites were raspberry, mango, mint, melon, cherry and grapefruit. Mojito flavor, while sounding tasty, is incredibly disgusting. But of course, anything from Vivoli Gelato is a must-try.
On our second day in Florence we went to the Capelle de Medici, which was a neat chapel belonging to the Medici family. We then walked to the Uffizi, and waited in line for 30 minutes before realizing it was a >3 hour wait and decided it wasn't worth it. Gordon discovered a fort on the map, so we trekked all the way across the city to see it - only to find it was closed! We then walked all the way back across the city to a lunch recommendation, and it too was closed! Exhausted, we stopped for lunch at a random restuarant and recuperated with some wine.
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