Day 2: Florence

It was a lovely sunny day when we woke up in Florence this morning. After yesterday's very early wake-up we had a more relaxed start to this morning, having a bit of a lie in before heading out to explore the city. From where we were staying we walked through narrow side streets until we got down to the river Arno.

We walked alongside the river for a while because we wanted to see the Ponto Vecchio, a medieval bridge across the river.

It looks great when you see it from a distance, though from memory it is quite claustrophobic to walk across because it's lined with small shops!

There were plenty of colourful buildings on the opposite river bank.

We crossed the river by a less historic bridge and started to climb uphill.

We were heading towards a square called Piazzale Michelangelo and the route there was rather steep. As we climbed, we started to get glimpses of the view through the trees.

It was hard work climbing uphill in the sunshine, so we stopped partway up for a drink at a little outdoor cafe with a view.

From there it wasn't too far up to the square and once we got there it was well worth the climb.

The views of Florence from up here are incredible.

While it's the huge dome of the Duomo which dominates the skyline, you can see lots of other churches and buildings too...

...and if you look in the opposite direction you can see the countryside outside of Florence as well.

We stood there for ages admiring how beautiful it was.

Then we climbed back down through the trees and found a restaurant in the old town where we had some amazing pasta for lunch.

After lunch we set off to explore the main centre of town.

We quickly found ourselves in a large square, outside the Palazzo Vecchio, which is Florence's town hall.

As you can doubtless tell from the photos, this was a pretty busy part of town!

We walked a little further through crowded streets and reached the cathedral itself.

It looks just as impressive from this level as it does when you're up on the hill.

And it's so large it's hard to fit it all in one photo!

There was one more church I wanted to see and that was Santa Maria Novella, which is not far from the train station.

It's an unusual church because it has an extremely ornate facade on this side, but then it's just plain brown bricks from all other angles.

The heat has been scorching all day, so at this point we decided to head back to the apartment and cool off in the air conditioning for a while. It's been a lovely day in a lovely city