So far, nothing has quite felt so surreal as standing in front of Il Duomo in Florence. I had dreamed about seeing it in person for so long, that I felt like it was hard for me to process. Or perhaps, that was the heat.
As hot as it had been in Switzerland, part of the feeling had been due to the humidity. Florence was at least less humid, but much hotter at nearly 100F. I immediately regretted not packing any athletic clothes, and only one pair of jean shorts. I had checked the weather leading up to us leaving, and all the temps seemed like reasonable summer temps. I was not prepared for Florence.
We took the local train from Fiesch down into Brig, where we caught a high speed train from Brig to Milan, then transferred at Milan to get to Florence. The Swiss trains were the best because they were built to provide stunning views:
But the Italian trains had pretty good views too:
We checked into the Hotel Atlantic Palace, which wasn’t very far from the Florence Central train station. After the Fiescherhof, which had no air conditioning, we felt so blissful walking into the coolness of our huge room. They upgraded us to a large suite, with a “king” size bed. As soon as we cooled off, we set out immediately to Il Duomo, again, quite close walking distance to our hotel.
From all I had studied about it, either I didn’t remember or the pictures don’t quite show how colorful the building is. Green stone, inlaid with a pinkish red, against the stark white of the marble. It’s so bright and cheerful compared to the outside of the cathedrals in London and Paris.
After walking around the entire building and declining to wait in the line that wrapped around half of it, we headed down to Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge.
Our hotel had a sister hotel, almost next door, that had a rooftop bar. So we headed there to grab a cold drink to cool down, and was greeted with this stunning view:
