Florence

Florence was beautiful. When we first arrived it was 5am in the morning. We got a taxi to the hostel and the city was empty. It was soo still and peaceful. There was not a soul in sight. We promised to get up early another day to see it all again but we never did. All the walking in the scorching heat meant we were pretty tired. The hostel where we stayed was close to the centre so it was easy to get around. Florence is also pretty small so we were able to walk. We visited Campanile, the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio and a few museum and other places. We of course visited the Galleria dell'Accademia, which houses Michaelangelo's statue of David. I didn't have high hopes for this because we had saw sooo many sculptures all over Florence. We had already saw 2 replica's of 'David' in the city. But the original blew me away. It was the epitomy of strenghth, but not like the other warrior sculptures where there would be some sort of slain animal or human, it was dignified and relaxed. There was so much detail in it and it was unbelievable to think someone had actually carved this and under the age of 30. I wasn't able to get photo's as the museum guards were wondering about and I was too scared to try. I did get photo's of the replica however I don't think it's as impressive.

We saw so much I lost track of everything. One night we visited the Ponte Vecchio which was lit up beautifully and we sat and listened to a street performer playing the acoustic guitar. It was really mesmirising. There's also a tradition in Florence in which people attach padlocks onto railings throughout the city. We saw this in Venice and Rome but it was most prominant in Florence. These are known as 'love padlocks' which mean you attack the padlock and throw away the key. I thought this was a sweet tradition and we had a padlock so we attacked it to railings on the Ponte Vecchio, just a little reminder that we were there.

Duomo

Florence at Night

Love Padlocks

Ponte Vecchio

Statue of David - Replica