Tuesday started with an early morning reservation at the Academia gallery near our hotel. The Academia is famous for housing the David statue by Michaelangelo. The thing that surprised me is that the David is the only cool thing there. We weren't supposed to take any pictures, but I snuck one in.
After the Academia we walked south toward the Duomo. Grace wanted to view the inside of the Cathedral and the Duomo so that is what we did next. The line was ridiculously long so I left to go to a sneaker shop I found the day before. There were older released Jordans that were available, unfortunately there was nothing in my size.
I walked back to the line and met Grace. About 45 minutes later we were at the entrance and paid. Surprisingly (to Grace) we immediately started our ascent. The climb to the top chapel of the Duomo was 414 steps. Yeah, that's a lot of steps. Not only was it a lot of steps, but the staircase was dank, dark and narrow. The first rest stop was a small ledge at the top of the Duomo that gave you a birdseye view into the Cathedral. The ledge was literally 3 feet wide. Grace was scared out of her mind but we continued up. When we finally got to the top she decided she did not want to step out into the chapel viewpoint area. She eventually went out there, but decided to stay along the wall for safety. I ventured out and took some pictures of the Florence skyline, the view was spectacular but being out on the chapel was scary so I didn't stay out there very long.
We started our descent down the stairways to get back down to street level. The way back down somehow ended up worse than the way up, there were traffic jams and the ceiling was lower so I hit my head a couple times.
After the Duomo we had to finish our souvenir shopping so we hit up the leather market at San Lorenzo. We walked through and ended up at the indoor market. The indoor market housed all sorts of shops, and to our surprise even a Filipino cuisine store. Apparently there are a lot of Filipino workers in Italy and Florence was no different. I am guessing this is where Tammy/Mark's parents bought the sinigang sour mix.
We had lunch at a place near Zaza/San Lorenzo, there I tried the famous Bisteca Fiorentina. The steak was huge (500g) and delicious. We also found the restaurant to serve the Fritti Flora (fried zucchini flowers) but it didn't stand up to the flowers we ate at the Villas.
We went back to the Hotel Carolus to pack for our travel home the next day. After we finished we walked down to the lobby and was guided to the best restaurant for the best dinner we had at Florence. The food was amazing, but we couldn't finish so we took it to go. We ended up finishing the food (pizza, spaghetti carbonara and pasta) on the plane home.
We walked one final time south and to our surprise we found Florence to be alive with people. It was about 11PM, and people were everywhere. We stumbled upon a salumeria where we finished our souvenir shopping.
While we walked through one of the piazzas we were treated to a performance by two Italian guitar players who sang "Mad World" while strumming their acoustic guitars. Very awesome way to end our Tuscan getaway.
The next morning at 4:30AM we left Florence to start our journey home...
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