Florence; park it! And bullet trains.

After packing up and leaving for the second time from Suzie's villa, we headed towards Florence.

Their suggestion had been to park in a lot outside of the city and then take a bus into town to see the sights.  The "clearly marked parking lots" mentioned by both Suzie and Jerry as well as in our guidebook were not even a blip on our radar.  We got all the way into town without seeing parking lots and were stymied from reaching our destination by the numerous roads marked with the international do not enter sign.  Did I mention they automatically charge you $100 fine for driving on them without a special permit?

In the old town, the streets are barely wide enough for a car and the roads are restricted to local traffic only.  We had set up Siri to take us to the museum with the Statue of David by Michelangelo.  Oops.  When that didn't work, we set up Siri to take us to the train station so we could return the damn car at one of two Avis areas in Florence and walk to see the statue.  Oops again.  When that didn't work we almost fled Florence completely to go return the car to Milan, but Richard's calmer head prevailed and we turned our sites on the airport rental car return, figuring that the car return there would feature highways, not restricted wagon carts from the 14th century.

We got the car returned and splurged on a cab ride back to the train station  This was probably the most stressful day of our trip.   We had pulled off on the side of the road twice when we could find a pseudo parking spot and tried to re-calculate some kind of trip but my navigation skills as well as Siri failed us in Florence.   We couldn't park, we didn't see parking lots, we didn't see bus stops, and we couldn't drive directly to the area with the things we wanted to see.

Taking a cab was a luxury for us, this was our first and only cab ride on the entire trip, and it was SO worth it that day.  One of the coolest things about Europe, at any large train station they had "bag drops", where you can pay to store your suitcases for the day while you tour the city.  We asked around at the train station and found the bag drop area and delivered our backpacks for the day.  The walk to see David was only about ten minutes.  But first, let's have another cappuccino.  We reactivated Siri and put her on walk mode.   She worked flawlessly.

We got to the museum and saw an amazing statue that I promptly took a picture of when two guards started shaking their fingers and yelling "no pictures", or the Italian equivalent.  I know I understood immediately what they were saying and after apologizing profusely, I put my iPhone away.

David was in the next room.  He's immense.  Nothing prepared me for the mastery of him in person.  He's over 17 feet high.  He has earthquake sensors on him.  They closely monitor numerous hairline cracks in him, particularly in his right leg, which has the brunt of the weight resting on it.  Truly an amazing feat of engineering as well as artistry, it was extraordinary and well worth the aggravation of getting into Florence.

Next up was the nearest piazza and church with a Duomo.  This was the first dome after St. Peter's Basilica.  For almost 1000 years, no one could recall how to build a Duomo.  We currently refer to that period as the Middle ages.   Or the dark ages, take your pick.  In seeing what Rome had conjured up, I was leaning towards the dark ages at this point.  This was the first time since Rome that we decided to inspect the inside of a church.  In we went.

And there was a turnstile, a "pay here, please", and then we were shuttled into a small door.....uh oh.  We are not small.  And we thought we were entering the CHURCH.  What we entered was the line to climb the Duomo!  So up we went around and around on a small stone spiral staircase that went on and on and on and on....Richard found a few spots to stop to let people pass him, but eventually we both made it all the way to the top!

Then it was down and down and down.  Unbelievably good exercise that day folks.  And mediocre views at best. But at least we got to take a bullet train at the end of the day, and headed back to Milan for our connection to Lugano.  The bullet train goins as fast as 240KM per hour, which was over 180MPH.  This train was luxurious compared to our previous Italia Rail experience.  We ended the day nicely:)