Weekend Trip to Firenze

So my main question here is how do we get the English name Florence from Firenze, the Italian name for the city? Yeah, who knows...

On Friday the 29th the feast of St. Peter and St.Paul are celebrated. Being two very important saints in the Catholic church (and the patron saints of Rome) it is a holiday here which meant no class on Friday (or monday). Thus, this weekend was a perfect opportunity to take a trip outside of Rome. 12 out of the 16 of us went together and even though there wasn't much advanced planning, the whole trip turned out very well!

This is the platform where we waited for our train to arrive. We left our apts at 6:30 am that morning--pretty early for college students on vacation! The ride was about three and a half hours long. The view was interesting along the way. First there were lots of agricultural fields and sunflower fields! Then we went through the mountains and some tunnels.

These are our first views of Florence and its famous cathedral, known as Il Duomo and its bell tower.

This is a view of Piazza Vecchio where you can see copies of famous statues housed in Florence's museums including the statue of David.

A view of Palazzo Vecchio, where the powerful Medici family lived. It's very distinctive tower can be seen in the skyline in many places in Florence.

the fake David statue

This is where we ate lunch right off the train. We couldn't check into our hostel until 2pm and our train arrived at 11am so we had a bit of time to kill. I wish I had taken a picture of the sandwich I got: it was huge, fresh, and delicious!

Some views of the beautiful Arno river.

a view of ponte vecchio

A view from Ponte Vecchio, which has shops and cute restaurants on it overlooking the river.

Florence has a lot more bikes than Rome does. In Rome the alternate form of transportation of choice seems to be the vespa, which is not quite as environmentally friendly.

The buildings in the city are of a different architectural style than most from this time period. The exterior is highly decorated with stripes of green marble or other green stone that is used to line the facades of the buildings.

a set of beautifully engraved doors

Stay tuned for day two of Florence tomorrow.