Cecil Planet: Viva L'Italia - A Day in Florence, Firenze

Following the trip in Venice, we traveled to Florence by train. The ride on Eurostar was quite comfortable. Even though I forgot to validate the ticket before boarding, it proved that our ticket already had a valid date and seat reservation that didn't need further validation (in fact, before realizing that, I validated it by the yellow machine in Padova instead).

Eurostar, Venice to Florence

Eating cherry on train

We arrived in Florence at noon. As the birthplace of the Renaissance, the city owns lots of artistic and architectural heritage. But our first impression of the city was cars. There were cars everywhere. Of course Florence doesn't has particularly large number of cars. However, after 3 days stay in Venice, we were not able to be used to cars instantly. I led my family to Hotel Basilea via my Garmin GPS. Then we headed to Uffizi Gallery to appreciate masterpieces of art.

Walking by the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (the Duomo), we were all in awe because the large holy church was so amazing. I admitted that when I first saw it on the internet, I thought it looked too complex and didn't like it much. I was wrong. Seeing it in real, I could not stop gazing it. No wonder it is the most popular site in Florence.

Our first group picture

Approaching the Uffizi gallery, we came to the Loggia dei Lanzi, where we took some funny pictures with renowned marble statues.

Imitation of the statue, The Rape of Polyxena

I booked the ticket of the Uffizi Gallery online before the trip to avoid the long queue in summertime. This helped us enter the gallery without much wait. When it comes to Uffizi, people always think of "The Birth of Venus" by Sandro Botticelli. Besides this masterwork, the Uffizi Gallery possesses a huge amount of collections of paintings and sculptures. Actually they were too many. Since we didn't have a tour guide to commentate the entire artwork to us, we got tired at the end of the visit. The first thing we did after leaving the gallery was to find a ince cream shop to enjoy yummy gelato.

My cousin Yuchin only smiled when she ate gelato

The view of the River Arno was picturesque. And for the first time in my life, I walked into an official Prada store (but didn't buy anything).

The River Arno and the Ponte Vecchio

Back to the Duomo, I successfully persuaded my family into visiting the top of the Duomo. I didn't expect this demanded much physical strength (you had to climb up the stairs for about 463 steps), but we made it. There we saw the whole city view of Florence, which was pretty awesome. It was worth it.

Finally climbed to the top of the Duomo

Panoramic view from the Duomo

For dinner, we certainly won't miss la bistecca alla fiorentina "beefsteak Florentine style". We dined at the restaurant "Il Latini", a traditional Tuscan restaurant the provided savory Tuscan food. Their beefsteak weights more than 1 kilogram. I shared it with 3 of my cousins so as to finished it (my aunt is a vegetarian, and my cousin Yuhsuan doesn't like to eat much meat). This was one of my favorite meals in Italy.