Florence

Florence

So next we went to Florence, we caught the train there and found our hostel; archirossi
We then went for a wonder and to find some food!! Foodwise, we found a little street side restaurant; I had seafood rissoto and Rosie had spaghetti with a wild boar sauce. They were both so good.

So after a sleep in our 9 bed dorm we went on the free tour that the hostel offered. It was a 2 hour tour taking us round the best bits of Florence and explaining it. It was really interesting and was really enjoyable too. We went across the ponte vecchio bridge and over to the pitti palace vis and ice cream parlour! In the afternoon, we walked up to the michael angelo piazza, which gave us great views out over the city. We made our way back to the pitti palace and had a look in the museum and around the gardens. The gardens are huge, and a great place to visit if you have a spare few hours, or want somewhere to read a book in the shade. We headed over to the Duomo. The Doumo in Florence is huge, you turn around a corner and it literally takes your breath away. The intricacy of the carvings on the outside is amazing. The inside is equally impressive but in a subtler way, and seems much smaller than the outside. You can also climb up the dome for a small price, it is like climbing a small hill, up a steep winding staircase, which emerges on the inside of the dome where you can clearly see the paintings on the dome, it then takes you up between the outer and inner shells of the dome until you are brought out at the top. The views are incredible, the only 'modern' building in site is the station, apart from that it is just terraced roofs and Tuscan hills in the distance.

We made our way back to the hostel for a quick shower and went to find some more fabulous Italian food. We found a rustic looking restaurant with enthusiastic and welcoming waiters and decided to share and spicy sausage and spinach pizza and bacon, tomato, onion and egg spaghetti. It was the best food we had eaten on the trip.