Florence... The City of Art and the Renaissance

Before our trip, I was looking forward to Venice more than anything, and for Nate, it was Rome, but surprisingly, we had a blast in Florence. The great thing about Florence is that it is very condensed. You can walk around and see all the best sights in a few hours, where as in Rome, it took all day!

The other thing that was great about Florence was the GELATO! It's known for having the best gelato in Italy and boy, is that right! Our first night, after visiting Orvieto, we found a place that had all natural/organic ingredients and it tasted like homemade ice cream, but better. You can tell from our faces that we kind of liked it...

The next morning, we went to the Academia to see Michelangelo's "David"...

The sculpture is incredible and huge... just about double Nate's height!

There were other sculptures by Michelangelo, but they're unfinished, so we'll never know what they were going to look like...

After the Academia, we saw the Duomo.... this is the bell tower of the church

It is incredible to think that the entire church is made of marble!

The Dome of the Duomo. When the church was built, they left a huge hole in the building (where the dome is today) because they were confident they would invent a way to make a dome that big... and they did!

A beautiful square in the center of Florence...

An imitation statue of David

Another imitation of David... haha

Late that afternoon, we went to the Ufizzi Gallery and saw amazing works of art by Botticelli, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures in the
museum, but here is one of the famous paintings you may recognize...

While in Florence, Nate and I discovered that we like taking silly self portraits and don't worry, there's more where that came from...