We were going to make today a more relaxed day since our feet and legs ached from the sightseeing the day before but once I got out of the hotel I was too excited to pass on any opportunities. We stopped for an espresso; Steven’s favorite part of Italy is standing in an Italian café sipping an espresso at the bar, and went to get tickets for the Cattedrale de Santa Maria del Flore. We went to the bell tower to get our tickets and started our day with a climb up the 270-foot tower. It was quite a climb with the stairs and corridor getting narrower the higher up we reached. Thankfully the top of the tower was like walking through a cage so although my fear of heights kicked in I felt somewhat OK. The view was spectacular. As we perused around the top of the tower and took in the sights of Florence from above, the tourists must have started flocking to the sights. We began our descent down the tower and it became increasingly busier. Eventually we were smooshing through people to get down the stairs. With my back against the wall and a person squeezing against me to get up the tower I wiggled my way down. I was glad when we reached the exterior and surprised at how long the line for the tower had become. We walked over to the cathedral entrance and the line was several hours long to get in. With the ticket we purchased at the tower we were able to gladly walk past everyone and right in the cathedral. The cathedral has strict dress code and since I was wearing shorts I had to purchase a surgical gown type thing to cover up which Steven, who was also wearing shorts, found amusing. The cathedral is impressive. The exterior of the church is decorated in green, pink and white marble. The interior is huge and beautiful. I found a prayer area, lit a candle and said a prayer for my parents (mama mia’s one request for my trip). For me, the most exciting part was seeing the dome, which I remember from my college art history classes. Filippo Brunelleschi designed the dome (duomo), which was the first Renaissance dome and took 14 years to complete. The rest of the cathedral had been built while waiting for someone to design and build the dome. Inside of the dome the Last Judgment was painted by Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccari. It is a truly beautiful painting. After getting our fill of the cathedral’s interior, we headed on down to the crypts below. Unfortunately, the crypts weren’t as interesting as we’d hoped; they’ve been heavily excavated and reworked, and little of the original stone structure remained visible. Instead, they’d put in false floors and ceilings, flashy museum-style displays, and a huge gift shop that took up most of the floor space. Classy. We looked around for 5 or 10 minutes, glancing at the various Medici graves that had been left on display, and then made our escape back upstairs.

From the cathedral we went to the baptistery, a separate building. The baptistery contains copies of the bronze doors created by Lorenzo Ghiberti which face the Duomo. The doors, which I also remember studying, were created by Ghiberti after winning a competition and beating Brunelleschi. The inside of the baptistery contains beautiful mosaic tiled floors and the mosaic Judgment Day Jesus giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down judgment.

Our next stop (remember our relaxing day idea?) was the Duomo museum. Much of the museum was closed but the original Ghiberti Gates of Paradise bronze door panels were on display. They were pretty fantastic. We also viewed one of Michelangelo’s Pieta sculptures.

With the baptistery checked off our list, the only part of the Duomo complex that remained to be seen was the impressive dome itself. Here we would be able to climb up the double-domed structure, view the painted interior from up close, and get a view from the highest structure in Florence once we reached the top. Unfortunately, this was where our all-inclusive ticket we’d gotten at the bell tower finally failed us. The ticket would give us free entrance to the dome, but unlike all the other attractions it would not allow us to skip the lines. By this point (only late-morning, still), the line wrapped all the way around 3 sides of the cathedral, and the temperature was already north of 100 degrees. We took a look at the lines, and both agreed that baking in a stone oven of a square for three or four hours wasn’t our idea of fun, so we headed back to our hotel once again.

After refreshing ourselves at the hotel, we headed back out again in the afternoon to do some more exploring. We hadn’t eaten lunch yet, instead relying on some gelato we’d grabbed earlier, and so we crossed the river into the southern part of town and stopped at a bar in a square to get some paninis. This was where our Rick Steves knowledge once again paid off: in Italy you pay different prices depending on whether you eat standing at the bar, eat inside, or eat outside at the table. We had our cappuccinos and paninis at the bar, and got to hear some other tourists complaining that the price was higher than they’d expected when they ate outside. Once we’d finished our food, we crossed over to the Santo Spirito Church located on the same piazza to take a look inside. This was another huge, impressive cathedral, with an incredible marble altar that was nearly the size of our house. The church also contained another Michelangelo sculpture, this time a wooden crucifix. He made the crucifix when he was 17 and donated it to the monastery for letting him dissect bodies to learn from. After we spent another 50 cents on another prayer candle for momma mia, we headed out to explore the southern part of the city for a little while, which we’d avoided so far. This area was a little less touristy and quieter, although we eventually ran into the massive palace and garden complex that were once the domain of (you guessed it), the Medici family. We stumbled upon an outdoor theatre that had been assembled for Roberto Benigni’s nightly readings of Dante’s Inferno. I briefly contemplated purchasing tickets but the language barrier might have made for a long performance. We crossed over the Ponte Vecchio which is Florence’s famous bridge (and the photo from the previous post). It was packed full of gold and jewelry vendors. The bridge is lined with stores on either side. After our wanderings I believe we called it a night. It was a long day.

Dad’s gelato shop-