And, unsurprisingly, Florence III

Saturday
'Twas a rainy morning, so we weren't quite as motivated to get our touristing on, but when we finally did get to town we went straight to the duomo (common nickname for the cathedral Santa Maria del fiore) to climb the 436 steps in the campanile. The pictures probably weren't as good as on a sunny day but it was still a pretty good view and we got our leg workout for the day. We then checked out the inside of the cathedral (which we hadn't been able to do the day before because I absentmindedly wore shorts, which are not allowed). The inside is surprisingly simple, without the ornate decorations that we saw in many other churches. There is, however, a massive fresco on the inside of the dome, depicting the final judgement and the dead rising out of their graves and heaven and hell. It is 3600 square meters of intense.

It was still raining quite a lot at that point, so we went to the central market. We were rather overwhelmed by all the amazing stands with fresh fruit, fresh meat, fresh fish, lots of varieties of alcohol. We found a nice place to have some lunch and stayed inside until the rain let up...sort of. We made our way to the Boboli gardens and the sun came out just in time for us to enjoy 2 hours of wandering around the gardens, taking pictures and admiring the impeccable landscape. A floating island, Cyprus alley, a Danish family that we happened to meet near the main statue. It was all very lovely :)

Sunday we walked around the olive grove since we hadn't done it before. We got the bottoms of our pants all soggy but it was worth it to see the property and the view from the hilltop. Finally we ate our Italian breakfast and departed for Cinque Terre.

That will be the start of another post