July 18, 2009

Last night was a fairly rough night in terms of the waters compared to other days, which have been very calm. A number of us were awakened around 5:00 a.m. by a fair bit of tossing by the waves, but were able to get back to sleep. We had another early morning breakfast at 7:00 a.m. and our cruise ship docked in Livorno at around 7:30-7:45 instead of 7:00 a.m. due to the rough waters. We caught our shuttle to the local train station and were off on another train, this time to Florence (Firenze). We arrived at 10:30 a.m. and headed off on our own walking tour of the city.

We made our way to the Piazza del Duomo and toured the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and viewed the famous bell tower. The exterior of the cathedral, the second largest cathedral in the world, is amazing, much more elaborately decorated than the interior, which was quite stark in comparison to the other cathedrals we have visited in Italy. The cupola is one of the largest in the world. Construction on the church began in 1296 and took 140 years to complete. The bell tower is 292 feet high and decorated with the same coloured marble as the cathedral. We then made our way to the Piazza della Signoria and the Palazzo della Signoria where we viewed a copy of Michelangelo’s statue of David. Unfortunately this was the only artwork we were able to view today. Ideally, we would have loved to have toured the Uffizi Gallery, Italy’s most important art collection with works by Da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo, and the Accademia, but we just didn’t have time for this kind of thing today.

After some gelato, which is the most amazing ice cream I have ever tasted, we crossed the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence lined with goldsmith’s shops, and walked to the Pitti Palace before turning back and making our way back to the train station, where we were back on the train by 3:30 in order to catch our shuttle in Livorno at 5:00 p.m.

We all agreed that this was a much more relaxed day then the hectic day in Rome yesterday. It helped that we weren’t trying to tour several different sites and that the temperature was a much more pleasant 28 C.

The last three days in Italy have been great. We have thoroughly enjoyed the sites and have said many times these past three days that we need to come back again some day!