Day 6 Part 3 - Sights of Florence

March 16, 2019

After leaving the Academia we still had some time to kill. We walked over the Firenze Santa Maria Novella (SMN) train station to check some schedules. It's a bit confusing with the name of the city, Florence vs Firenze. Apparently the original name for the city sounded more like Florence and the name stuck with English speaking visitors.

The train stations are a major part of a city centres in Italy and are often integrated with local transit stations. Here's one of Florence's trams with the  train station on the right. Florence isn't all that big, there are only two tram lines. One runs from the train station to the airport and the other seems to run parallel for much of that route before diverting away from the airport.

This hotel really caught my eye. I assume it primarily serves British visitors.



Right next door is the less compelling Buenos Aires Hotel.

Without question the major landmark in Florence is the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, also known as the Duomo. Here was our first close-up look.

From a bit farther back, the famous dome is more visible.



Right beside is the Campanile di Giotto Bell tower, an odd contrast in shape.

This sign had me wondering if they still sell film.

We usually skip the carriage rides, but we had time today. It let us take off the backpacks for a while.



Here's a short clip of our ride, it was a relaxing, if expensive experience.

This is a statue of Cosimo Medici.



Our tour took us near a copy of the statue of David in the Piazza della Signoria. Next to that is a statue of Hercules besting Cacus, the fire breathing son of Vulcan.



 I took this somewhere on the ride, just a nice looking feature on the building..



After the carriage ride, it was finally time to check into the Bed and Breakfast. It felt more like a small four to six room hotel on the top floor of an office/apartment building. There was a common area on the terrace that had a nice panorama view of the city.

First, the Duomo from a distance.

Edith suggested I should take the tour that allows one to reach the top of the dome. I was too tired to think about it. I did take this photo a bit earlier in the day of some people who did the climb.

I took shots of the city in each direction I could see. I think the first one is facing north.



Looking east past Edith. I assumed the green dome was another church, but when I did my research for this post, I discovered it was the Great Synagogue of Florence.



Here's Edith eating her Panini that she bought in Montecatini in the morning.



Edith took a shot of me and my trusty camera with the IPhone.

Here's a surreal shot of the Duomo with jet trails overhead, taken with the IPhone.

This movie with the church bells ringing catches it better:

I didn't expect much on the bird front in the city, but I like the textures in this shot of a pair of Rock Pigeons.



It had been a long day and we turned in quite early. We'd have the following day to explore the city before heading south the day after.