Florence Day 2

We have spent the past two days trekking all over Florence to enjoy the art, architecture, and atmosphere of this awesome city. On Monday, we started out at the famous Duomo, the large domed church designed by Brunelleschi. The church itself has many sculptures and works of art, but the main draw is the beautifully painted frescos inside the dome. After admiring this, we wandered down to the crypt below, where various religious figures and knights (aka Crusaders) are buried. Then we headed over to the Campanile (the bell tower of the Duomo) to hike the ten thousand stairs (maybe not quite that many, but close) to the top for the best view of the entire city.

We debated going to the top of the Duomo instead, but the problem with going to the top of the Duomo is that, once up there, you can't see the Duomo itself, which is the most impressive thing on the cityscape! So we did the Campanile, which was tiring but absolutely worth it. My poor legs were shaking by the time we were done, so we quickly checked out the Duomo Museum, which has all of the different designs offered up by the various artists of the time as well as Brunelleschi's final designs and the changes he made to those plans over the decades it took to actually build.

By now it was absolutely time for lunch. We stopped at a restaurant right around the corner from our hotel and enjoyed the most amazing gnocchi with a cheese sauce and porcini mushrooms as well as a Margherita pizza. It was so good we plan on eating there again before moving on to Rome.

After lunch we headed to the Galileo History of Science museum. This museum covers everything from barometers to electrical current generators to chemistry sets dating back to the 1300s. My two favorite areas were the pharmaceuticals (not surprising that nearly half of the Florentine population died from the bubonic plague when you see what they were working with!) and the astronomy section. It's hard to believe that scientists from the 1500 and 1600s were able to deduce anything about the heavens when you look at the tiny telescopes they were working with! But everything has got to start somewhere, and even if you're not a science nerd, I would still recommend this museum just to be impressed with what they were able to come up with back then, and to see how far we have progressed!

Upon returning to our hotel, we enjoyed the sunset with some wine of the top of the tower garden - I still can't get over how much we lucked out, finding a hotel right in the heart of the city with such an amazing view! For dinner, we found a hip little restaurant called Rose's, where we had a truly amazing dinner! We started out with "crispy ravioli," which was really 2 puff pastries with pancetta and cheese, and a baked zucchini flan. Both were absolutely incredible. We were getting pretty full at that point, so we decided to share the ossobucco, something neither of us had ever been fans of before - probably because we'd never experienced it Florence before! It was falling off the bone tender, and the sauce it was served with - well, I just don't have the words to describe it. Another restaurant we definitely plan to return to!