Rainy day in Montecatini but not to be deterred by the date or the weather we ventured out to Florence or should I say Firenze. It is a 45 minute train ride away. We arrived and immediately headed to El Duomo passing by Santa Maria Novella Church first. There is no shortage of churches in Italy. Like so many of the other buildings we've seen the Cathedral was incredibly impressive. The architecture, the art, the human labor that went into these edifices is almost beyond comprehension. We toured Santa Separata, the earlier church crypt inside the Duomo on which it - the Duomo- was built . While we didn't have time to climb the Duomo's dome we did climb the 414 steps of the Campanile, bell tower. I know I'll be feeling that tomorrow. But the views were well worth it. From there we toured the Duomo's Museum, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. There we saw one of Michelangelo's Pietas along with more statuary than I've ever seen before. A quick stop at the Baptistry was in order before we trekked to the Uffizi Gallery. To keep up our strength we stopped along the way and split a cannoli. Yum! At the Uffizi we were again overwhelmed by the statues and paintings done by the greats like Leonardo di Vinci, Michelangelo and Botticelli. Even though the day was threatening we mostly avoided the rain. We had umbrellas but when the rain and wind came the umbrellas were no match and our rain gear sufficed. But as one such downpour hit as we were luckily stopped for a cup of tea and an apple cake with ice cream and whipped cream and basically as most of our planned itinerary was inside we were unaffected by the weather. We couldn't leave Firenze without seeing the great statue of David so it was on to the Accademia. We viewed David and the other works in the Accademia before heading home. We covered a lot of territory in our day in Firenze. Caught the 6:00 train back to Montecatini and then went to the hotel happy hour before heading out to dinner. For dinner I had linguine with pesto and pine nuts and Ron had veal scallopine. For dessert we went to visit our favorite gelateria.
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| Our first glimpse of El Duomo |
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| The ceiling of El Duomo |
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| The crypts under El Duomo |
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| The Bell Tower |
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| View of El Duomo from the Bell Tower |
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| View of Firenze from the Bell Tower |
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| A display at El Duomo Museum |
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| Another beautiful door |
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| A silver casket at El Duomo Museum |
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| One of Michelangelo's Pietas |
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| The facade of El Duomo |
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| The ceiling of the Baptistry |
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| A sculpture at the Uffizi |
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| Michelangelo |
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| Another sculpture |
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| Bottocelli |
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| DiVinci |
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| The statue of David at the Accademia - what else can I say? |
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| Looked like "build a bust" at the Accademia |
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