Ahhh...Florence...

On Sunday, we got up early and caught a cab to the train station. When we arrived, we purchased three round trip tickets to Florence on the Eurostar Train. This is a high speed train that is quite comfy. The trip was about 1 1/2 hours and went through some gorgeous country. Upon arriving in Florence, we left the train station and headed toward the main part of the town. Fortunately, Ange had been here before, so she was able to navigate easily through the streets. Although the area around the train station is pretty sketchy, the farther away we got, the less graffiti we saw and the nicer the areas became. We had wanted to visit the Academia Museum because Riley wanted to see the original statue of "David" by Michelangelo, but he became less interested when he saw the line that was more than a block long, so we kept moving. We finally came to the Doumo Church, another huge sanctuary for Catholics. Even though the Duomo is huge, however, it could easily fit inside St. Peter's. Mass was being held when we arrived, so we just took pictures of the outside and then moved on. There was a huge outdoor flea market where mostly leather products were sold by vendors who were eager to show all passers-by their wares. We passed the market and headed to the river where Ange knew of a nice restaurant for lunch. We spent over two hours sitting and enjoying our meal (including delicious creme brulee for dessert) while overlooking the river. It was heavenly!

After lunch we continued wandering the streets and checking out the quaint little shops that drew in all the tourists. It wasn't until we made it back to the market place when we finally got serious about our shopping. Ange got a very nice briefcase and I was able to barter for a gorgeous tapestry depicting one of my favorite Klimt paintings. After making our final purchases, we made our way back to the Doumo Church and had dinner in the surrounding plaza. Our train was scheduled to leave at 8:50, but we got back to the train station where Ange was able to sweet talk one of the engineers into letting us on an earlier train. We were pooped from walking all day! We are so glad we were able to make it there, though. The train was a very convenient option and cost about 60 euros a piece for the round trip tickets.