Florence by Foot

Plaster casts used as models for artists for many of the real statutes seen in Florence

The original David were photos are not allowed!

The Duomo in Florence

Other angles of the Duomo

Cute Grocery shops with strawberries do die for they were so sweet.

This statue looked happy to have his photo taken!

 A Grocery Shop from the front in Florence's side street - so cute

Today we were up and about at 7.30am ready to walk around Florence. First on the list was to see the original Michaelangelo's David in the Academia delle Belle Arti which is usually closed on Monday but as luck had it today was a public holiday and they were open. I don’t think the tour guides knew this as there weren’t any tourist around. Gary even managed to get illegal photos of him because it was so quiet they didn't notice us. But from here we walked to Duomo where the queues were basically wrapped around the large Piazza so we took a photo of the crowds instead. It was like summer crowds because of the long weekend. We then just walked across the city towards the famous streets full of designer clothes ranging from Gucci, Pucci, Prada, Armani, Valentino to name but a few and only looked from the outside. There were thousands of tourists there being led like sheep with their tour guides holding up numbers to they could be followed all talking into hand-pieces. We got away from the crowds and wound our way through some narrow cobble stone streets where we stumbled into the cutest fruit shop with the largest and sweetest strawberries we have ever tasted. We had then been walking for about 5 hours already so we needed to find a café for lunch a wine and a rest. We will go out tonight to large street concert being set up in the Piazza G Poggie just down the road from us which should be great! Tomorrow is our last day here before we head south to Cinque Terre via Pizza, we think. Before we go we will concentrate on this side of the river where there are more parks and walks and views over the city. We have to keep our fitness up before our bike trip. Bye for now Love Chel and Gary.