10/28
Florence is great – our favorite city so far! However, it’s expensive and if I have to walk by another Gucci, Louis Vuitton, or Dolce and Gabbana, I’m going to scream! None of that is in our budget.
On our first day, we arrived by train and then walked about a mile to our hotel. Cobblestones and rolly suitcases are not friends, FYI. We checked into our hotel and then went back out for our walking tour of the Uffizi gallery. We saw so many medieval paintings. Venus of Urbino was our fav – we’ll have to get a copy of that to hang somewhere in our house. Afterwards, we found a place to eat – I had lasagna and Josh got the carbonara…for like the 15th time. We ordered a bottle of chianti – the waiter said it’s not possible to not like chianti. It was delish!
Our hotel in Florence was the most expensive (almost a grand for the 4 nights we were there – ouch!) but was def the best as far as location. We were right next to the Ponte Vecchio – the oldest bridge in Florence. They call it the golden bridge because there are a bunch of gold jewelry shops along the bridge. There’s also a walk way that the ruling family, the Medici, built in the middle ages so that they could walk from their palace (the Pitti Palace – which was also the name of our hotel) to the Uffizi where they did their business. The walkway was covered and raised off the bridge so the Medici didn’t have to interact with the peasants.
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| Our hotel room. |
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| Beautiful! |
Besides the location of the hotel, we had an amazing view of Florence from the roof-top dining area. Our room also had a pretty neat view of the main intersection near the Ponte Vecchio – great for people watching!
