First day in Florence

We spent our last morning in Arezzo having breakfast in the sunshine by the pool. We were very sad to leave, it was such an amazing place to stay.

We were also determined to use the pool at least once while we were there! It wasn't heated, and since the B&B was on the top of a hill, it was pretty windy and not too warm. It was freezing, so we were in and out pretty quickly, but it was still really nice for the short time we were there.

We drove to Siena to drop off our rental car, and caught the train to Florence. It's pretty quick, only about an hour and a half.

We were a bit disappointed when we first arrived in Florence. We were so used to small towns after a week of them, that arriving in a large city with thousands of tourists everywhere was a bit daunting. Plus, the train station isn't that nice, it's in kind of a dodgy area. We were actually staying less than a 5 minute walk from the train station, so we were a bit apprehensive. Luckily, the B&B was lovely. I was expecting it to be super loud, since it overlooks the main road, but the sound-proofing was amazing. We heard almost nothing from the street, and we arrived to find a plate of goodies waiting for us.

We relaxed in our room for a while, we were pretty exhausted after our trip from Arezzo, we'd been up since very early in the morning, then we left the room and went for a wander round the city.

Florence isn't a huge city, but it felt huge after all the other places we had visited. Florence has the most amazing architecture, and just has sculptures and statues everywhere.

The Piazza del Duomo was about a 10 minute walk from our B&B. It's hidden by all these tall buildings, so we literally turned a corner and there it was. It is so amazingly stunning to see in person. It's huge, and there are just tourists everywhere. There was constantly a very long line to go up the Duomo. You probably remember from our video we filmed, we didn't go up the Duomo, we went up Giotto's Bell Tower (Campanile) instead.

The building's themselves are just amazing, you can see how stunning the architecture is from the photos, and it's even better up close. It looks quite grey, but up close it's all pinks and greens.

Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore

Piazza della Repubblica

Palazzo Vecchio

Fountain of Neptune

Equestrian statue of Cosimo

Replica of Statue of David

Hercules and Cacus

Perseus

Loggia dei Lanzi

Outside the Uffizi Gallery

These were all over Florence, so funny!

In the late afternoon we wandered up to Piazzale Michelangelo. This is a huge square on top of a hill overlooking Florence. We actually ended up here both evenings, it was so nice to sit on the steps overlooking Florence and watching the sun go down. It had the most amazing views.