Italy, Day 4

After breakfast at the hotel, we departed in the bus for Florence.  This is our driver Claudio.  He spoke very little English.  He sure was cute and a very good driver.

We made a quick stop overlooking Florence for a photo op.  What a beautiful view of the city!

Then on to Florence.  We had a guided tour of Florence which took over two hours.  That's our guide in the red hat.  We had headsets for this tour.

Florence was very crowded and our guide walked a little fast for us old people!  We felt like we were on a race!  There's so much to see in Florence though.

Lots of statues in this area including a David statue.

I'm not sure what this area is or why there's a replica of the David here.  I thought that was the "real" David statue.

More walking.

Look how the cars and scooters are jammed in there.  All very small cars.

Scooter parts as decoration on this building.

The real statue of David is in the Galeria dell'Academia.

His hands and feet are freakishly big compared to his body.

What is it with the naked statues?

There was a lot more to see in this Galeria but we didn't have much time there.

Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore.  Unfortunately we didn't get to go in.  The guide said they were doing renovating.  Disappointing!

It was beautiful and very ornate on the outside.

After the tour we had a late lunch of pizza at a walk-up café.  We sat at a table outside as it was such a beautiful day...not to mention there was no place to sit inside this little place.  This is typical in Italy.

We opted NOT to eat at this McDonalds!

We didn't have much free time in Florence but there was time for gelato!

So yummy!  My goal was to have gelato every day I was in Italy and I was on my way to accomplishing it!  We sat at outside table to enjoy the gelato and watch people.  Art all over the street.

Beautiful walk on the way back to the bus.

Back on the bus and we drove to Castello di Verrazzano for dinner.  A couple of the views from the winery.

These are the views once you leave the big city.

The Castello di Verrazzano is a winery.  We took a little tour of the winery before dinner.

Castello is on the left in his picture below.

Grapes were drying.

The restaurant is just behind the grape vines.

So many wine glasses!  We had five courses of wine.  I'm not much of a wine drinker and don't like red wine at all so most of my glasses remained empty.

First course was sausage of some sort which is served a lot over there.

Main course.

Dessert wine and biscotti.

Way too strong for me!

None of us were very impressed with the food in Italy.  That was kind of disappointing.

There's a lot of history in Florence.  Wish we had had more time there!