About to leave Florence behind, tomorrow morning we take an early morning train to Rome where we wrap up our trip. Florence was really cool. I still feel there's plenty of places to go and see as two nights more or less felt good, we could have done more. We ended up splicing in two full day group trips as we figured ahead it would be a nice way to hit a few places we wanted to see and instead of planning anything it was nice for to just not worry about it and have everything spoon fed to us for a couple days.
So 4 nights total in Florence but we did two twelve hour day trips in between. First we hit Pisa, San Gimignano, Siena and a whine tasting and lunch in Chianti. Pisa was cool to see the main stuff and honestly was kinda the extra on the trip we didn't really plan to go there otherwise. Siena was really awesome. We did a guided walking tour and had about an hour of free time as well. Its a neat medieval town with lots of history, especially with Florence. They do the huge horse races every year that runs through the city centre piaza with the giant church and tower. San Gimignano was kinda similar but smaller and I was more tired at the end of the day and cared less and we had less time . The Chianti countryside was beautiful, the rolling hills and iconic Gladiator like trees. The wine tasting was awesome and the food was top notch. Overall great day, just long and hot.
Day two trip was Cinque Terre. More relaxed and got some great swimming in. Beautiful iconic seaside towns with the colorful houses. Very much reminded of the Amalfi coast with the towns just kinda built into the side of the cliffs along the water. We went to 4 of the 5 iconic villages. Holy fuck was it a hot day though, I sweat out of places I didn't know I could sweat from. Thank god we could swim though, the water was beautiful.
In Florence over the two days we kinda saw everything we wanted. Only thing is we didn't make it inside the Duomo. We didn't buy tickets ahead of time and the lineup was massive unfortunately so we skipped it. We did a hop on hop off tour the one day around the city though and got the pics from Michelangelo square with panoramic views of the city. We did the academia gallery with David, very impressive. We went to the Uffizi gallery and man was that amazing. We saw Pontevecio as well. Had some amazing food, the one cab we took the driver recommended a pasta place in a different area. Probably the best pasta we've had so far, great wine and great prices. It was busy when we got there but as we went to leave it was a massive lineup. I looked up reviews after they've got a 4.5 rating on Google with like 18k reviews
We didn't end up trying the Florentine steak it just didn't work out but next time I'm back that's at the top of my list. We did however tonight try the Gelato place @Dr. Gonzo recommended. It turned out was only a 15 min walk from our hotel so we tried it after dinner. Holy fuck that was the best Hazelnut anything ever. We've had some good gelato but that's definitely up there. Too many pictures but that'll be the one to use!