Florence

We cleared out of our campsite in Strada on Friday morning and finished up the last 10 km of riding into Florence. We headed to Piazza de Signori where we had plans to meet our friend Dina from Raleigh. She has been in Italy for a separate trip and we decided that we should all get together while we are here. Once we met up with Dina and her friend Sarah, we spent most of the afternoon wandering around the city lost. We started out looking for a post office for Dina to ship some things back to the States, then for the meetup spot for Sarah to rejoin her tour, then for the bus to pick up Dina’s luggage, and finally for our hotel. None of these were easy to find and the hotel was especially difficult since it was on a street that was not on any of our maps.

Lost

By the time we had everything figured out, it was already five and too late to go back into the city. We walked to the supermarket to get some things for dinner, and spent the night on the back patio of the hotel eating and sharing stories of our adventures in Italy. We kept talking about going out and doing something, but the only thing we could motivate ourselves to do was head down the street for some gelato.

Dinner on the hotel patio

The next morning we fueled up on croissants and juice at the hotel breakfast before hitting the city to see the sights that we missed while lost the previous day. Our first stop was the Duomo, which is absolutely stunning from the exterior, but we skipped the interior tour due to long lines.

Matt and Andrew in front of Duomo

We then made our way back to Piazza de Signora to see the replica Statue of David, among other sculptures, and kept going down to Ponte Vecchio which is the only remaining original bridge into Florence since the others were all burned during WWII. The bridge is lined with shops selling gold and silver jewelry.

Ponte Vecchio

From there, we made one last stop at the Bargello museum to take in some art. The museum consisted mostly of sculptures from the 15th to 16th centuries and even included a couple of Michelangelo’s works. From the museum we split up, with Dina and Matt going to some shops while Andrew took his bike to a bike shop that he spotted earlier in the day hoping to get his freehub fixed. The employees at the shop didn’t speak much English and refused to work on the bike, only saying the name and location of another shop in town. Since our time in Florence was running short, there was no time to visit another shop. We regrouped at the hotel to pack and check out. Once packed, Dina caught a cab and the guys rode their bikes to the train station where we got back together and booked tickets to Cinque Terre.

Our bikes loaded on the train