Florence day 1

Our hotel room in Florence was a palace. Esther's sister, Louise, booked it for us using some points she had racked up with Westin hotels. And she ordered a bottle of champagne to be chilled for us upon our arrival at the hotel to celebrate our 30th birthdays. Not too shabby.



And we had a great view from the hotel room (seen in the picture above as well) over the Arno with the Ponte Vecchio in the distance (it's the third bridge down):



So, fortified with Champagne, we set off to explore the Duomo in Florence (too large to fit into any one picture):





It is quite large on the inside with painted ceilings (okay only the dome ceilings are painted):





Then we went on to get enormous ice cream cones. We didn't see the small sized cones, so I got the biggest one I saw and got two enormous scoops put onto it and then saw how huge it was. The woman behind the counter thought it was pretty funny, fooling the Americans into buying big cones of ice cream. She kept telling me I needed whipped cream and a biscuit on top of it. Silly Italians.



Then we wandered around the market, where there were probably a hundred stalls but each stall either sold T-shirts, wallets, masks, or knick knacks. So there wasn't much variety. It was fun to wander through it though. I bought a new wallet because mine had broken the week before.



We visited the Medici Chapels next, but pictures were not allowed inside so I have no pictures of it. I did not find it worth the 9 Euros we paid for it because it was under a lot of construction. Sights should really charge reduced prices when half of the church/palace/facade is covered with scaffolding.

We wandered around Florence for a bit, working up appetites for the usual pasta-and-pizza-and-wine dinner. Florence is gorgeous, especially in the late afternoon sunlight:





We wandered into Piazza della Signoria where there are tons of statues, including the fake of the David:



And Palazzo Vecchio, which we did not go into but enjoyed staring at it while we had some cocktails ...



and watched the sun set ...



Actually I enjoyed the sun set while Es read her romance novel ...



And then we had the usual dinner - wine, pizza with ham and ricotta, spinach sauteed in something yummy, and gnocchi:





It doesn't get much better than that. And we have been eating heavy foods, but we probably walked about 10 miles a day on this trip so we deserved to eat well. And, you can't be on a diet in Italy. I don't think it's possible. So why even try.

Oh but it's easy to not eat bread in Italy. It is *awful*. Hard as a rock. They make up for the bad bread by making awesome pasta, so you can still overload on carbs.