Day 20/6 - Venice to Florence, Italy

The next day we got to sleep in a bit since our drive was only 2 ½ hours! That was nice =] We went to Florence and were able to be there around lunch time so we could see things. The first thing we went to see, as to make sure we didn’t miss it, was the Duomo! I had studied about the duomo in humanities and was very excited to go see it in person! We got there right around 12:30, but it was closed for mass, so we hung out in line and got some lunch and what not. It opened back up at 1:30 and so we went in! It was beautiful, but they had the area roped off around the dome, so you couldn’t go and see the ceiling of the dome! We were so sad we couldn’t see that. It was still beautiful anyway.

The Duomo, and the long line of people waiting to get in. Thankfully, we were near the front!

I just really like how this picture of the entrance to the duomo turned out, with the sun spots and what not =]

The beautiful dome, of which you couldn't see the whole thing because they had it blocked off =[

So beautiful, and huge!

I think this was a museum...

Replica of Michaelangelo's David, as seen outside a museum. We didn't get to go see the real David, because of lines and short amount of time, but we were all ok with that

While we were walking to the duomo, we passed so many shops, but we had to keep telling everyone that we needed to get to the duomo first because we kept missing things because we were getting there too late, and we didn’t want to miss the duomo! After the duomo we walked over to a museum where the fake David was housed, but we didn’t go in because it was too expensive. So we saw some of the statues that were outside the museum and that was cool. After that we walked over to the Uffizi Museum but again, the line was too long for what we wanted to do. So we said no thanks, and walked to a famous bridge, the Ponte Vecchio. Along the way to the famous bridge we passed these chains that were covered in locks and I remembered reading about these and how people put locks on there for some reason or another. 

This cupid statue guy was prettyfunny

Some of the locks. Come to find out, if you lock the lock on the chain and throw the key in the river, your love will last forever

One of the many chains full of locks

We saw the bridge and walked across it and such. There are a lot of shops on the bridge, so of course we looked at them.

The bridge. Love the reflection in the water

Me and the bridge

After we saw the bridge we took a break for a bit and I noticed huge rain clouds coming in. Never good. So we are walking to the Medici house and literally, we get to the plaza out front the house and the skies open up! It felt so good because it was hot. The dad’s went to buy tickets, the mom’s stood under the awning and the kids danced in the rain (we are travelling with some friends, hence two sets of parents =) ] So we go in, and it is just coming down, literally, buckets of water, more than I’ve ever seen it rain! So we stood around watching it for a bit, and then we walked through the museum. 1 ½ hours later, and it is still coming down just as hard as in the beginning (there was even hail at the beginning!) So we chill on the staircase for another 1 ½ hours. We meet some new people and talk to them for a long while, and then we notice they are starting to clean up….and it’s still raining outside. So my dad goes and buys everyone ponchos and off we walk in the pouring rain to find a restaurant for dinner. We find one, and walk in looking like wet dogs. Oh well. Dinner was delicious and by the time we left dinner it had finally stopped raining. Sadly we didn’t find any gelato that night =[

Incredible. I've never seen in rain so hard in my life

I don't even think when we lived in China and had the typhoons come in that it rained like this, or if it did, it didn't last for 2+ hours like this!