Florence

When we first got on the plane.  We look happy, fresh and excited!  We had a non-stop flight from SLC to Paris... yeah a long flight!  I got some sleep but mostly we were just excited!

This was our first gelato in Italy.  I am in love of gelato.  We had at least one a day!  Delicious!  If you notice the street behind us, it was still decorated for Christmas and it was BEAUTIFUL!  We loved walking down the streets with tons of lights and decor.  It truly was magical! 

This is our illegal picture of the David by Michelangelo.  Those other sculptures in the hall are unfinished works by Michelangelo.  They were beautiful and it was pretty surreal to be looking at such a famous work of art!  It is beautiful, and as you can tell, it's quite large as well!

This is Michelangelo's tomb.  It was in a church named San Croce and this church also had the tombs of Galileo, as well as Nicolini.  It was pretty cool to be in such a place!

This is the Duomo in Florence.  This is THE church in Florence.  It was SO beautiful!  The outside of it was just magnificent and very large! 

We decided that we wanted to climb to the very top of the Duomo.  So we climbed 463 steps to the top!  A lot of the way it looked just like this staircase, but as you start climbing over the dome part, it gets a little sketchy.  It was definitely an adventure!

This is the view from the top!  Worth every single step!  It was so gorgeous to look out over the city and all that it holds!  Italy truly is full of beauty!  No wonder why so many artists came from this area of the world!

There is a river that goes through Florence and it is flanked by many apartment buildings and shops.  If you notice, the bottom floor of all the buildings are shops and merchants, and the other floors are apartments.  That is how most of the buildings were there.  It was pretty amazing really! 

We thought this picture was pretty funny... David always gives us that look though so nothing new! Behind us is a bridge that has a bunch of gold jewelers on it.  It is pretty cool to walk through there, but it is VERY high end... we didn't purchase anything in that part of town..  ;) 

This is the inside of the Duomo.  Isn't it beautiful?!  Very exquisite work!

The morning we left Florence we decided we wanted to do a Segway tour.  BEST. IDEA. EVER!  We LOVED it!  I seriously want to purchase one!  I just have to live closer to town to justify it though...  

Florence was so amazing!  There are seriously just piazzas full of sculptures and works of art!  It is a smaller city so it definitely had a charming feel.  We stayed just down the street from the Duomo and it was pretty spectacular to walk outside of our hotel and see this building just down the street!  We were only in Florence for really only a day and a half and then we took a train to Rome.  Just being there for that long, we did a lot and had a great experience!