Vienna to Florence Days 25 to 26

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Hi Everyone,

Excuse the total lack of photos but the internet here is patchy.

So we we are now in comparitively warm and sunny Italy. We seem to have become so used to the cold weather that we are in little more than jumpers, while locals are rugged up big time. Our overnight train was a little bit better than the least one as we had more uniterupted stops. The next one we take will be on an actual sleeper so that should be much better. Onto the wrap up of yesterdays sightseeing in Vienna.

We started early in Vienna because we had to attend the Spanish Riding School first thing (no photos of this anyways cause its not allowed). The excercise in the morning if for the junior horses so it was pretty funny seeing some of them being not quite right. So after freezing at the riding school because we chsoose door seat we headed to the Belevedere Castle which would be more appropriate to call a Palace. It was not quite as big as the Schonbrunn and neither were the garden, so in hindsight we should have visited this one first to make Schonbrunn look better. That's todays hot tip. We walked around the Botanic and Alpine Gardens there and once we decided we were too cold we jumped back on a tram to see the rest of the things for the day. It was windy and -5 ish so probabaly the coldest we have been so far.

We firstly went to the Albertini to have a closer look around and instead stumbled upon a Butterfly House which we went and had a look in. The 100% percent humidty and 30 degrees was not fun given the outside temperature but it was nice inside. We spent a bit more time checking out the parks in the Heldenplatz and visiting an Italian catholic church which was amazing inside with huge gothic arches, also a very large mosiac reproduction of the last supper. We spent some time wander the streets looking at a few more churches and exploring the parks before it was time to return and pick our bags up to get the train. Our time in Vienna was really nice, if not cold, and we imagine that we only really covered about 1% of what is possible given the 100+ plus museums in the city centre alone.

So our train ride was fairly uneventful and we managed to get somewhere in he vicinity of 2 - 4 hours sleep before arriving at 6.00 am in Florence. We then booked our trips to Venice and to Rome so everything is completly arranged up until flying home in 5 days time. We then killed some time before our check in at 9.00. Once there we quickly dumped our gear and began exploring Florence. I should mention that we have an amazing view on the Hostel blacony overlooking the city centre and Doume. You'd be jealous if only the photo upload would work!

We firstly headed to the top of the city to explore a fortress, but found that there was some sort of dancing mega festival on so we were unable to get in there. We plan on trying again on Monday as we will be Venice all tomorrow. So we basically planned our walking around the heading towards the highest landmark we could see, this also inadventerntly brought us through a strip market which was good news for Holly and thrill for Nick too 😞 After negoatiating the hoards of tourists we got through to the Doume in the centre of the city. We were suprised at the number of tourists and surmised that during the summer months this must be a living hell. It is comfortabe at the moment but much more and it would be very annoying. So after this we just headed around at some more churches, Battistero, Santa Croce and the accompying plaza and then we tried to head to the river but our navigation was out and we got pizza instead. Even though we had no idea where we were you can navigate using the same landmarks so we did that and manage to find our way back to the hostel for a break, via the street market 😞

We organised our afternoon walking and began at the street market, again, before going Basilica di Santa Maria Novella and then continuing on to the river and the Ponte Vecchio. It was packed but still quite nice and after dodging traffic and other tourist alike we manage to get across and the onto the Piazza de' Pitti. This was fairly underwhelming seeing as we didn't fork out to go to the museums. I think we saw enough art in the Louvre to cover us for a life time. We then found some steep back streets and walk our way up to some of the old cities walks and the larger villas which overlook the city. This was nice as it offered view over the city centre as well as the Piazza di' Michaelangelo which we are going to walk to on Monday after visiting the Uffiza gallery first thing to avoid crowds. After that it was getting quite late for our sleep deprived bodies so we headed back and got some food for home cooking before ending our day. On a side note the supermarket was a amzing, more like andvery cheap gourmet food shop in Australia, we were in heaven and bought amazing motzeralla, bries and meats for dinner, even freshly cooked and still warm crunchy bread. Massive cheap gourmet Pesto Torettelini with Crunchy Bread and Brie ala Nick and Holly. All topped of with a 1L rose wine for just over 10 euros. I know how we are cooking the rest of the time we are in Italy.

So that about sums up the last 2 days. We have managed to organise some trains to Venice tomorrow which we are really excited about and then we will have one day left in Florence before heading of to Rome. If we can sort of the photos for Vienna and Florence we will upload them in a seperate blog entry.

Till tomorrow,
Nick and Holly.

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