Italy Day Tre

Day Three didn’t start off so well. In our Venitian hotel, Hotel Airone, we woke up to find FOUR ticks in the bed, and we are pretty sure they were there all night. Since we woke up so early, we took the early train to Florence.

As we arrived in Florence, it started POURING. We had my pretty pink umbrella, but our pant legs and shoes got soaked.

We first went to the Duomo and were very impressed at how ornate, big and colorful it was.

Inside the Duomo was kind of plain. There were a few paintings here and there, but nothing even close to the churches in Milan and Venice.

The dome had a wonderful, colorful painting of the Last Judgment, but I'll cover that in the next installment.

We ate lunch at Cafe David (yummy gnocchi), and planned to climb the stairs to the top of the Duomo, but then it started raining again. Fortunately for us, I am a genius and scoped out a dry spot in the gigantic doorway of the Duomo (they keep the main front doors closed off and send the tourists through side doors). Other tourists tried to copy my brilliance and crowded around us, but they simply blocked the rain and kept us warm. After that deluge, the day got a little better.

I had an audio guide for a Florence walking tour on my iPod, so when it stopped raining, we strolled through the town. Florence was the birthplace of the Renascence, and artwork was everywhere.

The old town square included a public sculpture gallery and a replica of the David.

We toured the Uffizi Gallery, which holds many famous paintings. I learned about many of them in art history class at OSU, so I felt like quite the scholar as we walked through the maze of paintings and sculptures. Unfortunately, I did not take this picture.

The gallery was huge and we had seen approximately 997 paintings of the Madonna and child, so we decided to get outta town. We rented a car and headed to the agritourismo south of Florence in the Chianti region of Tuscany. Getting out of Florence was a nightmare! We don't ever want to have to drive there again!

Agritourismo Poggio Asciutto was absolutely beautiful! It was exactly what we wanted from this vacation.

We had a small apartment with an incredible view of the countryside.

For dinner, we ate with the owners, Mossimo and Eva and their cute little girl, Olivia. Other guests also joined us. A couple from California had taken the Tuscan cooking lessons, and we got to eat what they cooked. We had a chicken liver pate (Scott ate it, I didn't) and crostini with a tomato mixture (and yes, I ate tomatoes)! The next course was spaghetti with chianti and pancetta. The main course was roast beef with potatoes. Dessert was an apple tart. The food was really good and we enjoyed the experience of a homemade Italian meal. It felt like we were actual guests in Mossimo and Eva's home...until we got the bill.

The room was very clean (no ticks—we checked) and we slept like babies. We love Italy!