Day 32 Florence:

Its 2:45 and we have just arrived in Florence and in the words of George Costanza “I”M BACK BABY!!!! This place is FANTASTIC. We get off the train and it’s about a 400m walk to our apartment entrance. We are greeted by the agent, Mine (pronounced My-Knee) and she takes us up the four flights of stairs to our apartment. We are greeted by another person, Stefano (we think he’s the owner) at the door. Mine shows us through the apartment and this place is superb, the best apartment we have been in so far. This was the apartment we had to book last minute when we were in London because the previous apartment became unavailable. It just so happens that the previous apartment was also managed by the same dude as the Venice apartment so we are feeling pretty smug right about now. While Mine is showing us around, Stefano has gone back down the four flights of stairs and carted all our luggage up to the apartment. Now, Kristine has been on a bit of a shopping spree over the past 4 weeks so these bags are bloody heavy, but no probs for Stefano, what a guy! They go through all the finer details with us and then Stefano presents us with a gift wrapped bottle of wine. We are sobbing with joy at this point....just kidding, but it was pretty awesome and this vindicated they way we felt about our Venice apartment. We throw our stuff in the rooms and head straight out for a wander and some late lunch. Literally outside our door is a hive of activity, street markets, shops, restaurants, bars, you name it. We go no more than 100m and we get ushered into a restaurant by a very enthusiastic man telling us that his brother is the best chef in Florence. The food wasn’t the best but it was very cheap and it was a very entertaining afternoon. We continued on and find a supermarket just down the road so we stocked up with fruit and groceries. By now it’s around 6ish so we head back to the apartment to shower up to head back out again. We get moving again around 7ish and head of for another wander. We walk no more than 200m and bang, the Duomo is staring straight down at us, what an awesome sight. This is the reason we came to Florence, the Duomo. I can’t wait until I get the opportunity to go inside. We continue on and come across a little square, the Piazza Della Republica where there is a three piece band playing. One guy is on the double bass, another on guitar and the other on violin. They are playing all the Italian classics so we sit and watch for a while before deciding to fork out the 10 Euro for their CD. We like the music so much we take a seat at one of the restaurants in the Piazza and order some wine and we sit and listen for an hour or so. We finish up and take the short walk home. This is what we thought Italy would be like, the people here are very friendly, they’re enthusiastic and we love the joint.

"The Duomo"

"The kids standing in front of the Duomo"