Day 2

We woke up after about twelve hours of sleep and didn't have anything planned, so we consulted our guidebook for some tourist-y things to do. We ended up deciding not to go to the Uffizi or the Academia since we a) hadn't bought tickets in advance and didn't want to stand in line for two hours and b) didn't want to deal with the crowds inside either (maybe it wasn't crowded inside). So we got in line to climb Il Duomo; it took twenty minutes or a half hour to get inside, but it was worth it. Basically, you are climbing a staircase inside the wall of the church and eventually the dome on top (see previous post), so it is understandably narrow. For part of the way, the people climbing up and the people climbing down use the same staircase, so you get pretty intimate with some complete strangers. Once at the top, of course, you climb out into the open air and see Florence from above, and it is very cool.


The periodic windows inside the wall of the dome also afforded some interestingly framed views of the city.

After The Duomo, we walked around a bit and headed for the Bargello Museum. This is a museum of sculpture, and there are a number of Michelangelo and Donatello pieces, among others (you may be expecting it, but I refuse to do a TMNT joke; even I have limits). I am not a museum-philic, but it was interesting enough, I suppose. Here is one sculpture (it sure did take a long time for me to pose while it was being sculpted):


After the museum, we sought out some lunch. After what seemed like hours of searching for a Domino's, we gave up and just got some pizza at a local cafe. It was simple and good, as expected. We went back to the hotel and took a short rest, after which we headed out again to the Santa Croce (church). This is the church that is in the lower of the two pictures from atop Il Duomo above, and here:

You are allowed to take pictures inside, but not with flashes, so it was hard to get good pictures. Apparently some tombs of famous people are inside, such as Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Enrico Fermi. It was also a little creepy how there were slabs of marbe in the floor with inscriptions, ostensibly meaning that there were ACTUAL DEAD PEOPLE beneath them. And we were literally walking on their graves.

Anyway, that was basically it for day 2, except for the dinner at our hotel, during which the people (Americans) next to us bitched about their food such that they weren't charged for their entrees (even though the woman cleaned her plate - how bad could it have been?) and then conspired to write every travel guide they knew and "warn" other people about the restaurant at this hotel. Total douchebags. I kept hoping that the guy would choke on his $40 bottle of wine, but it didn't happen.

Next: day 3!