Where are the Venitian blinds?

After searching high and low, we were still not able to find any Venitian blinds. They must be here somehwere! After watching Leslie get attacked by the thousands of birds in Piazza San Marco, we finally began to make our way to Florence.

We had reserved two seats on the train from Bologna to Florence, but when we got on board, we were told that this was a different train and that it was late and so we didn't have any seats in the cabin. Luckily, there are little fold down seats in the coach hallways, so it really wasn't a big deal. What's annoying is that I'm pretty certain that the people in our seats just made the whole story up counting on the fact that we didn't speak Italian and they could take advantage of us. Oh well, we got to Florence, so no big deal.



After a quick cab ride to our hotel, we were informed that there was a problem with the reservation due to the holiday (apparently there is a holiday to celebrate Italy's forming of a republic) and we would be staying at a different hotel down the street. Generally not what you want to hear. The new hotel/hostel is very nice though and it even has A/C which is quite a luxury. After some quick freshening up, we went straight to the Duomo and climbed 414 steps to the top of the tower for a fantastic view of the city. It was a long way up, but the view made it all worthwhile.

After that, it was off to the Accedemia to see Michelangelo's David. Very impressive statue. It's just huge! You have to see it in person to appreciate how big it is. Very cool.



Finally, to end the day, we had a great meal at Acqua 2 followed by some superb gelato at Vivoli, the most famous gelato shop in Italy.