Re-Living the Trip Part 3 - Florence and Sienna

We hung out in Florence for a day and did city things. The city is much smaller than I would have guessed, both in terms of population (400 000, according to Rick Steves.) and urban sprawl (or lack thereof). Florence was a great city just to wander around in on foot.

A couple of highlights were our little Italian landlady (ask Kristin about you, you will laugh your ass off), some of the best gelato we had all trip (which says something), and a market where we bought roasted veggies, fresh cheese and bread for lunch (damn!) and some fruit.


We decided to rent bikes to ride outside the city of the second day. We had planned to do this before, but the "plan" was much more in the ideas stage. ;) We lucked out though, because as it turned out, there was a sweet bike store (that did rentals) about a block from out hotel. We found it by walking home from dinner the night before we planned to leave. Perfect!

Biking to Sienna on Euro-cruisers was definitely a trip highlight. It was so much fun, and a good workout day at the same time. It was about 85 km, and SERIOUSLY HILLY. We had a great day, and we were pretty stoked to get there, as I'm sure you can see in the picture. Of course when I say "there", I really mean about 2 km straight downhill from Sienna (as in we had to ride up again), but I didn't know that at the time of the picture. ;)

Sienna itself was very cool. The highlight for me was the Duomo (church). When we arrived, they had unfortunately just shut it (to tourists) as mass was about to stay. Kristin managed to convince them IN ITALIAN that we wanted to see the mass. A few minutes of convincing later (skills), we were in.


ps. had I had more internet time in Italy, I wanted to crop this picture, and stick in on the blog with "OMG the pope!" or something along those lines.

pps. This dude was going to mass with white socks and sandals. BUSTED.