The breakfast buffet at the new hotel was located up on the 5th or 6th floor, so we had to take a very tiny elevator to get there.
After the first day, Mikey and Huzbend raced up the steps to get there. Katie and I continued to take the elevator.
The breakfast was okay. They had a HUGE pastry selection, just like the other place. We agreed it wasn't as good as the Rome hotel. The options for Mikey were more limited.
My achilles was feeling a bit better. I did not have to rely on the crutches so much anymore, but carried them around, just in case. I didn't want to be out and about and have it "let go" again and be in pain.
This meant that I was back to official picture duty.
The kids had me take a picture of the sword themed light fixtures in the stairwells of the hotel.
On tap for this morning was climbing to the top of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral dome.
Still being injured, I bowed out of this one.
There are a total of 463 steps to the top of the dome and there are very few areas to stop and catch your breath. The steps are very steep and narrow. No surprise there. I mean, it was built in, like, the 1400s.
I would have never made it.
Huzbend and the kids strategized and pumped themselves up.
Off they go!
Buona fortuna!
While they were climbing, I hobbled my way around Florence.
I stopped in a farmacia to get some anti-itch cream.
The mosquitos were eating Mikey and I alive.
I walked my way around the Piazza del Duomo and took some photos of the cathedral in the sun.
The green, red and white colors popped in the light.
Many of the tourist areas of Florence are for pedestrians only.
That is because the city center is essentially unchanged in layout from its Renaissance days.
You are surrounded with reminders of the past.
There were TONS of people in the plaza.
Lines to enter different areas of the Duomo complex were huge (except to get into the museum) and snaked everywhere.
Tons of people standing around means tons of other people looking for opportunities to make or take money from them.
There were people hawking all sorts of things - art, shawls (you needed to have your shoulders and knees covered to enter some churches), selfie sticks, children's toys, roses, bracelets (of course), water, and more.
There were some horse drawn carriages parked in front of the cathedral.
They had water in those orange buckets.
I eventually found a bench to wait on.
It was getting hotter and I needed a walking break.
The exit from the dome climb was on the opposite side of the cathedral, next to Giotto's Bell Tower.
Spoiler Alert: We did NOT climb the bell tower, although Katie wanted to.
Let's join the rest of the family on their adventure up to the top of Brunelleschi's dome.
Who is Brunelleschi?
Filippo Brunelleschi was a goldsmith and sculptor. Fate decided that he would become an engineer and architectural genius.
It was his mathematical calculations and engineering ideas that brought the giant cathedral dome to life.
It's 10 stories tall, consists of 4 million bricks weighing over 40,000 tons, was built without using an internal wood structure to hold up the brick structure, has an internal and external dome structure AND he created technology that was used to lower and raise the materials.
The group that entered at 9:45am was sequestered in the cathedral until it was their time to start climbing.
Photos from here on out are from Huzbend and Katie.
If there is a finger in the photo, like the one below, that is Huzbend.
I'm not sure I need to say this, but I will.
There was no air-conditioning.
It's here that I will hand off author duties to Katie so that she can walk you through their experience.
Shall we begin?
First up, about halfway up to where the dome part of the Duomo actually starts are some rooms, one on each side (one for the ascent and one for the descent). The ascending room contains a bunch of huge statues of important popes. Not sure who made these, or why, but they're big and cool to look at.
I think these might be replicas of similar pope statues that now live in the museum that houses all the Duomo art not still attached to the building.
Here we are taking a selfie in front of one of the previously mentioned pope statues. The actual one in the museum looks really cool. The book in his hands is very detailed.
Here we are closer to where the dome actually begins, looking out of one of the many small windows that line the stairs on the way up the dome. You can see some houses and stuff out the window.
Here's a video of what it's like to walk up the stairs!
We've finally reached the place where the dome part of the cathedral actually begins.
Below is a zoomed-in picture looking down on where we stood at the altar and pews on the church floor before starting our climb. They have a little walkway around the edge of the dome where you can walk around on the inside and look at the paintings on the dome up close.
More high up pictures of the church below from the walkway. You can see part of the walkway across from us in this one, as well as the railing in front of me.
In this picture you can see more of the altars and church floor, including some very far away people looking around down on the floor of the church. You can go inside the cathedral and look around for free, so there were lots of people wandering around down there.
Unfortunately, there's some plexiglass/plastic barriers surrounding the walkway around the dome, so this picture has some weird haze from the glass. You can see some stained-glass windows here, which depict Jesus and some saints. Above that is the painted ceiling mural, which I have more pictures of later.
Here's Mikey and Dad looking up at the murals.
Both seem to be based on accounts in Dante's Divine Comedy, a famous series of Italian epic poems (Inferno, "Hell"; Purgatorio, "Purgatory"; and Paradiso, "Heaven") written in the early 1300s and finished 60 years before this cathedral was built. I'll talk about some specific Dante references in this mural later.
Here's some people getting maimed/killed in hell! Wow!
And here's heaven, with I think Jesus in the big golden chair and a bunch of saints/angels around him in the clouds.
This is a big giant demon thing eating people.
Dad made me take a lot of pictures of the weird demon paintings in hell 'cause he thought they were cool.
This is a closer image of one of the stained-glass windows. I'm sure all of this stuff (include all of the guys in the heaven/hell mural ceiling dome) have names and are important Christian/Catholic people, but I have no idea what they are, so feel free to look it up.
More saints in stained-glass windows.
Here's a better face-forwards picture of hell and the weird three headed goat/dragon/person demon who's eating people. This guy is Dante's interpretation of Satan/Lucifer, directly described in the text of his Inferno. The three guys he's chewing on are Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Iscariot. Brutus and Cassius were the main executors of Julius Caesar's assassination, and Judas Iscariot was the apostle who betrayed Jesus in in the Bible.
This poor guy's face fell off the mural at some point (or wasn't constructed, but I doubt it). This guy is another specific reference to Dante's Inferno, where a demon disembowels some guy so violently they took everything but his spine out. Dante says they cut him from his windpipe to "where one breaketh wind".
Dad thought this guy was silly looking and wanted a picture.
Some weird harpy-esque demon with maybe some kind of shovel? There are harpies in Dante's Inferno, but only in one specific section, so not sure why these ladies are here.
Some more silly demons and tortured souls.
Here's a picture of me and Mikey walking along towards the stairs continuing up towards the top of the dome.
More Firenze houses from above. We're even higher up now!
We took a break halfway up the dome part of the climb because Mikey was too tired and felt like he was gonna throw up. There was a nice little alcove next to the stairs to sit down on for a bit. We got to watch other people go up past us.
Here's Mikey, notably less than enthused about the dome climbing.
We made it to the top! There's Firenze in the background way, way below us!
From here, you can see part of the cathedral and the bell tower, as well as the hills next to Firenze and the rest of the town! Our hotel building might be in this picture, actually, as well as some of the other things we visited in Firenze.
Some hills, the Arno River, and more houses and stuff.
There's another church!
I wonder whose fortress that is way over there. The Italian countryside is very pretty.
Looking down from where I was standing for all of those pictures.
Me and Mikey at the top!
There was a little pavilion up there extending out from where the stained glass was at the top of the dome on the inside (which we saw earlier).
Here's a panoramic video from the top of the Duomo!
What goes up must eventually come back down (at least, in relation to climbing up domes).
Here you can see the outer and inner domes. Brunelleschi's dome technique involved the creation of two domes to support each other, and the gap between them is wide enough that you can walk through it. The inner dome is the one with the mural on it, while the outer dome is the big red tiled one you can see in most pictures of the Duomo.
For your viewing pleasure, here's a video of us walking back down the dome on the other side!
Halfway down! Say hello to the weird mural again with all the maimed/eaten/dead guys and the saints!
Another view of the city.
We're three quarters of the way down the now. This is the descent room (like the pope statue room) and it contains all of the original tools Brunelleschi constructed to build the Duomo and there is a helpful plaque explaining what all of them are.
Some more interesting old tools.
Almost all the way down!
There's one of the lines to get into the building! I think this one is for the bell tower.
And we made it! There's the line of people waiting to head up to the top like we did.
I will now hand the narrative back to my mom, who will finish off this post for you!
When they finished up, we decided to find a bench to sit down and let Mikey recuperate a bit longer.
We did some people watching and tried to spot cute doggos.
SUCCESS!
We all missed Ralph.
There were also a crap load of pigeons everywhere.
Close to where we were sitting, there was a Lindt chocolate store.
Katie and I went in to look at the chocolates.
After translating/reading the ingredient labels of just about every chocolate in the store, we found some that were gluten free.
I picked up a chocolate that had a picture of Mozart on it.
Turns out that this is a thing.
There is a type of chocolate called a Mozartkugeln.
Traditionally, it's pistachio marzipan filling surrounded by nougat and dipped in dark chocolate.
This one had a hazelnut creme center surrounded by pistachio marzipan and dipped in dark chocolate.
It was different and pretty good.
You can't really go wrong with chocolate.
I'm thinking we might have mistranslated this one.
There was liquid in the middle.
And that liquid was alcohol.
Cherry alcohol to be exact.
I guess you CAN go wrong with chocolate.
Good thing lunch was up next.
Katie was left with a very distinct Cherry Tylenol aftertaste that needed clearing out.
We headed to one of the highest rated pizza joints in Florence...
Sounds like a bad name for a mediocre small town pizza joint, but mediocre this place was not.
It was delicious.
In case you were wondering, Mikey had all of his pizza without cheese, which was pretty normal in Italy.
We felt the focus of their pizza was more about dough, sauce quality and then toppings with cheese last in importance.
Here's Katie's GF pie.
Still reeling from the awful chocolate, Katie picked out a GF flourless chocolate cake for dessert.
There was no need for two forks.
After lunch, we visited the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
This museum houses the original art that had been located in the various Duomo buildings, including the cathedral.
Here are the original Gates of Paradise bronze gilded doors.
THE Michelangelo called them that thinking them extraordinarily beautiful, and the name stuck.
Way back in 1401, Lorenzo Ghiberti won a contest to design and create the doors for the baptistry building that as part of the Duomo complex.
He won out against Filippo Brunelleschi, and you know what he went on to accomplish (see dome above).
The Gates of Paradise are most famous for their detailed depiction of scenes from the Old Testament.
The 10 panels took him 15 years to complete.
They combine what is best about Renaissance art: attention to detail, a definitive narrative conveyed through art, and an understanding of perspective...all done in BRONZE.
The detail is incredible .....
Excuse me.
Original sculptures from around the Duomo complex are housed here.
The kids were endlessly amused by them and pointed out specific sculptures for me to take pictures of.
For example.
They had me take a picture of these two after almost falling on the floor laughing.
Renaissance sculptors created the Drake meme way before its time.
There were some displays that allowed one to touch or interact with the art.
This one allowed you to touch a bronze plate.
Mikey decided to pick the guy's nose.
Only highbrow humor here.
This is Brunelleschi's death mask.
Egad. What an uncanny resemblance.
Yes. We are THOSE tourists.
That room also hosted some examples of equipment and contraptions used to build the dome.
From this vantage point you could catch details in the architecture, like this creepy rain spout.
Or the amazing gothic arches and the color of the marble.
I am not quite sure what Mikey is measuring in this picture.
A boy playing with his dog.
Another favorite of the kids.
This guy had super large hands.
I tried to explain perspective, but it didn't matter.
He was Pope Flappy Hands the First.
On the top floor of the museum, there was a door to the roof so you could look upon the dome from a different and closer angle.
As long as your husband doesn't get in the way.
I think we had a touch of the sillies that afternoon.
Or the amazing gothic arches and the color of the marble.
Selfie time.
Mikey was intensely studying this silver and gold altar.
It was a beautiful piece of art.
It turns out that he thought this figure of John the Baptist was funny.
"Hey bruh. Name's John. John The Baptist."
They had a neat room where you could select tunes from old sheet music found in the church.
They would play over loud speakers.
Lastly, they had a few rooms dedicated to relics from the cathedral.
A relic is the mortal remains of a saint or anything that may have touched their body.
An example is this piece of jawbone below.
There is still a tooth in it.
I don't remember what was in this one, but the craftmanship of the container was beautiful.
I have no words.....
So I will just chuckle.
After our tour of the Duomo museum, we had a bit of time to kill before our next reservation.
We headed back to the hotel to relax.
It was hot in Rome, but it was VERY hot in Florence.
Having the hotel so centrally located and within a 10-minute walk of most of the main sites was a blessing.
As we left the hotel, it seemed as if a storm was brewing.
There were dark clouds and as we approached our destination, big bloppy rain drops began to fall.
I felt sorry for the people waiting in the long line to get in.
We had arrived at the Accademia.
There really is ONE reason to visit the Accademia and that is Michelangelo's David.
Did we rush right in to see him?
NAY, NAY my friends!
In order to prolong our anticipation, we detoured into an exhibit of old musical instruments.
It was, uh, probably interesting for people that played instruments. Not so much for us.
We paused before turning the comer into David's hallway to audibly gasp at these ugly medieval angel baby heads.
Finally, there he was, waiting for us at the end of the hallway housing four other unfinished Michelangelo sculptures.
As you approach, there is a great gob of people standing directly in front of him with their phones up in the air. Guess I was guilty of this as well.
For those keeping track, the is David #2 of our trip.
Things to note about this David: He is a young man (maybe late teens early twenties) and not a boy. He is calm, composed, and confident. David has not yet fought Goliath in this depiction. He's minutes away from battle with the sling draped over his shoulder and a stone in hand.
This incarnation of David reminded the kids of an anime character named Giorno Giovanna (aka JoJo).
Hence his christening as "JoJo David".
See....
He was clearly inspired.
There is lots of history and stats regarding the creation of David.
He's 17 feet tall, constructed from a one solid block of flawed marble, and so on and so on.
You can read more here.
I was awed just to be in the presence of my favorite Renaissance statue of all time.
Happy tears were shed.
We could not resist a shameless tourist selfie with David.
Here I am art-splaining something to Mikey.
I'm not sure why no one else got up close to the ropes.
We're probably in a lot of other people's pictures. Whoops.
You can walk completely around David.
It is possible to get a prime picture of his larger-than-life buttocks.
My favorite part of the whole experience was being able to walk around the statue and look at it from all angles.
I took A LOT of pictures of David and took extra time to take it all in.
Here's what it really looks like as you're walking around.
Lots of people.
In one of the rooms branching off the main hallway there is a gallery of sculptures.
They are everywhere, jam packed into the space and taking up all that you see.
These were a few of Katie and I's favorites.
Mikey and Huzbend flew through this room.
A mad but sad boi.
A peacefully sleeping toddler.
A boy playing with his dog.
We missed Ralph again.
Katie wanted to investigate what was upstairs. Huzbend followed.
A very dramatic scorned young man.
The more Renaissance art you see, the more you realize how horrible Medieval art is.
Check out this Baby Jesus.
Yikes.
As we exited David's hallway, we stopped to say thanks to Michelangelo Buonarotti himself.
Katie wanted to investigate what was upstairs. Huzbend followed.
I decided to give my achilles a rest and stayed downstairs.
Turned out it was an exhibit dedicated to how medieval panel paintings of Jesus were made.
They had a gift shop (most of the sites that we visited did).
Mikey decided to wait downstairs with me.
As he was waiting, he began laughing hysterically at a thought he had.
"So, I was thinking. There must be times when the Pope has to poop. He would buzz his assistant on the intercom to let him know. He would say (in a really bad Italian accent), 'Hello. The pope-uh has to go ah-poop-uh.'"
I didn't say it was a deep thought.
I resisted the urge to purchase this hilariously garish David serving tray.
We left and stopped back at the hotel before dinner.
Florence had some spectacular graffiti/street art.
We stopped in a tourist trap store that sold weird foods from Italy and other countries.
They had things like inappropriately themed potato chips and strawberry and cream Dr. Pepper.
One of Italy's contributions was penis shaped pasta.
Dinner time!
This night, we ate at Trattoria da Garibardi for some traditional Tuscan dishes.
Three of us shared a giant Florentine steak and some seasonal veggies.
Katie enjoyed some spaghetti carbonara.
Mmmm. Just looking at that makes my stomach growl.
Katie followed up her pasta with some creme brulee.
I had some sort of pistachio cake that had a chocolate filling.
There was nothing dairy free on the restaurant dessert menu, but there was a gelato place across the street.
Mikey was able to get his favorites, dark chocolate and strawberry.
He sat down on the patio to enjoy it.
Huzbend and Katie leaned against a wall and digested their food.
I took a photo of a man-hole cover in Rome, so I thought I would take one in Florence.
Join us as we walk past the Basilica di San Lorenzo on our way to the hotel.
Katie had worked her way through most of the chocolates she had purchased that morning.
She wanted to take a picture of all the colorful wrappers.
I had noticed that there was a lot of street noise that we could hear.
I checked our windows, and one was not closed all the way.
Upon opening it to figure out how to close it, we found a moth tucked inside.
We made sure to shoo him away. Time for some sleep.
