I am continuing to work though the photos from our Italy trip.  Florence was our next stop after Venice.  We only stayed two days in Florence, but would have loved to stay longer.  We were picked up at the train station and driven to the hotel.  This was my first real experience with traffic, pedestrians, and driving in Italy.  My word of advice about driving in Italy is "Don't".  I might chance driving in the countryside but not in the city.  You would need to go to Mexico and practice driving there before attempting to drive in the larger cities of Italy.  We visited the two main museums there which are the Academia and the Uffizi.  The lines to get inside these museums are unbelievable.  The only option, in my opinion, is to have a tour guide or purchase the "skip the line" passes ahead of time.  Some of the museums will not allow cameras inside, so that is why the only photo in this blog from inside the museum was from my cell phone.  

All of the cities and towns we visited had a "Duomo" in them.  The term Duomo means Italian cathedral.  All of the duomos that we saw were huge.  I cannot put into words or photographs as to how massive these structures are.  All are very ornate on the inside and outside of the cathedral. These are the photos of the Duomo in Florence:

Venice-4 Venice-5 Venice-7

As you can see the camera lens I had with me was not wide angle enough to get all of outside this massive structure into one frame.  

My favorite photos of Florence were the ones taken at night:

Venice-20 This was taken along the banks of the Arno River.

Venice-14 Ponte Vecchio Bridge

Venice-17 Ponte Vecchio Bridge with light trails from the passing vehicles

Florence transportation:

Venice-23 I had to put this photo in because this is how many in Italy travel.  The scooters are everywhere.  This photo was taken in the early morning, which is why you only see two people on scooters here, otherwise this roadway would have been heavily congested with traffic.  

Mary and I both said the three things about Italy that we did not care for was cigarette smoke,  scooter exhaust, and city traffic.  

Florence holds the one piece of art that I really wanted to see.  Michael Angelo is known for his paintings, but his heart and passion was sculpting.  The Academia museum holds the statue of David which was sculpted by Michael Angelo.  I have to say it is impressive and very much worth fighting the crowds to see.  Here is a cell phone photo of the sculpture:

This is the same photo but gives a perspective to the size of this sculpting:

Simply and unbelievable impressive work of art that I feel very fortunate to have observed from such close proximity.  

That about wraps it up for Florence, but just as an added note the food was outstanding.  I'm hoping to start on the Tuscany photos and blog soon.  Hope you enjoy the photos.

Sincerely,

Kelly