Florence & Tuscany
We took the train from Venice and arrived in Florence (called Firenze by the Italians). The balance of our first day was the usual orientation. We stayed in a small apartment called Il Nido Di Santa Croce, which was well located for our activities. Right across from the street is the Piazza di Santa Croce which I assume is where they got the name!
Florence is more of a traditional large city, and nothing like Venice. There are lots of taxis and quite a bit of tourist activity everywhere you go. Unlike Venice, you just can't escape the mobs. For the first two days we did our out-of-town travelling, covering the suggested towns in Tuscany, and after that we went to museums and in-town activities.
This first set of pictures are just some "around Florence" shots..
Piazza di Santa Croce, right across from the street our apartment was on.
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On the first full day, we arranged for a private driver to take us to Siena and San Gimignano. With our limited walking, it would have been impossible to get the feel of entering the walls and seeing these towns as they once were, but our driver was able to go right into the main square and we walked around the nearby areas. Obviously we missed a lot doing it that way.
Inside Siena, where the driver left us
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The next day we took a local train to Pisa. The original idea was to see both Pisa and Lucca by train, but we decided to just do Pisa. I know that everyone says that Pisa is overrated, but it was nice to actually see something you've heard about and seen pictures of for years. It reallly got tiresome avoiding people doing selfies that made it look as though they were holding the tower up.
First look at the Tower
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Our next day was allocated to the Accademia Gallery and the Duomo Museum. The Accademia was very impressive and I guess everyone has to see the David. The Duomo, less so. It was attractive from the outside, but inside it was just one big room and we could barely hear the guide.
This was the biggest collection of tourists that we saw. I cannot imagine what it must be like in season! Here we are lining up to use our "skip-the-line" tickets.
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Our last full day was allocated to the Uffizi Gallery and the Galileo Science Museum. In retorospect that was too much for one day for us. The Uffizi got repetitive and I wish we'd had more time (and energy) for the Science Museum. By the time we got there, we were just going through the motions. I didn't realize that it covered a lot more than just Galileo's stuff. Most of the images below are from the Uffizi and I don't know what they are! The last two came from the Galileo.
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