Florence, Day 1

I was sad to leave the beach, but Florence awaits!

We got up early and took the 6:40 am Circumvesuviana train to Naples. It was practically empty, and I am glad we took the earlier train. I had planned on taking the 7:30 train, but the lady at the ticket stand said this commuter train was notorious for being late so we should take the earlier train. Although we didn’t want to get up so early, the train took a 20-minute unscheduled break halfway through the route, and then took extra time at a few stops. So we only got to our next train 15 minutes early. We took the next train up to Florence, where we hauled all our stuff the 15 minutes to our next apartment. This is the view from the outside of our apartment—right outside the Duomo!

Today we did not have too much planned; just looking around the cathedral and other buildings here. We walked around the outside of the cathedral and other buildings, including the baptistry and the bell tower. We really liked the famous golden doors of the baptistry. We wanted to go inside the cathedral, which is free, but there was a long line. We took turns standing in line while someone took the kids into different stores and shops. Two hours later, we were almost to the beginning of the line, but we had tickets for the duomo tour so we had to get out of line. I was so disappointed, but little did we know we could see the inside of the cathedral from the side of the duomo entrance, and it really wasn’t that exciting.

The duomo tour was pretty cool, and Zoey counted the steps going up. There were 455 steps up (and then back down again)! We walked up the winding circular staircase to the dome, where we could see all the beautiful paintings. Willow really liked the stained glass. Going up from the dome to the cupola, some of the steps were really big! The view from the top was spectacular, and you could see the whole town of Florence along with the surrounding Tuscany countryside. I took a picture of Zoey and Ronin taking a selfie just because it was too cute.

After we finished looking at the cathedral, duomo, and other surrounding buildings we walked to the Mercato Centrale to see all the booths and shops. There were so many people selling leather, and all saying that theirs was the best price for ‘real’ Italian leather. I wanted to buy a leather jacket, but after trying on a few it was just too hot and sticky to try on any more leather!