Florence

Okay, first let me heartily apologize from my very long absence from blogging. Not sure where the time has gone. I've even had things to blog about! So, without further ado, I present my day-trip to Florence that I took Halloween weekend. Yes, Halloween has just been upgraded to a holiday deserving its own weekend. Anyways....

The decision was made to (finally) embark on the one-hour trip to Florence. With the number of times this expedition has been put off, you'd think Florence was an arduous one-day trek-through-the-desert away. But no, it is theoretically only an hour away.

Megan, Mark, and I show up at the train station at 8:45 Am on Saturday morning. Pretty impressive feat, in and of itself. So, when do we actually arrive in Florence, after the train delays and being forced to take the much slower Regionale train? Oh, about noon. Such a happy time. Actually, it wasn't too bad, because the leaves were changing in the countryside. All was not lost.

Anyway, in the time we were in Florence, we saw:

Duomo

We even made the 473-step climb to the top of the Duomo, via some very winding, stone staircases (Also please note the date of this trip--October 29th. And yes, I am wearing a tank top. And my Birks! Jealous? The last time this year for both of those, I am afraid):

The real jewel of the Duomo is the Michelangelo's "Gates of Paradise" painted on the ceiling of the Duomo.

The Ponte Vecchio bridge on the other side of the River Arno, reported to have existed since Roman times:

Mark and myself on the side of the river:

And that was Florence. I tried to purchase a leather satchel, so as to avoid the embarrassment of showing up for a business-type event at the local HQ of an Italian bank wearing a suit and carrying my hideously ugly backpack. But, alas, the satchel was not meant to be that day....Actually, the leather products (for which Florence is known) turned out to be more expensive that I thought. For sad, very sad indeed....

Oh, the other interesting part of this adventure was how happy we all were to return to Bologna. I think I have mentioned this before, but one of the beauties of Bologna is there are virtually no tourists. Just the locals and us. Once in a while you run into a stray visitor, but there are no souvenir shops lining the streets or huge throngs of Americans. The exact opposite was true of Florence. Foreigners everywhere. I said that if I encountered a Taco Bell, I was getting on the train and going back to Bologna. The lowest point was when I went into a small cafe to purchase a bottle of water. I had said nothing to the man, but when he quoted my tab to me, he did so in English--did not even try with the Italian. In Bologna, they always quote prices to me in Italian. So, it was nice to return to the "real Italy" in Bologna....