Florence

After Zurich we boarded a train for Florence. Jason's dad was curious as to which route we were going to take through the mountains, and it turns out we followed much of the historic William Tell route. The scenery was gorgeous and the train ride included trips through a couple of very long tunnels.
We arrived in Florence in the late afternoon, checked into our hostel and set out to explore the city. We headed toward the main plaza because we were hoping to make reservations to visit the Uffizi the next morning. We'd read that you can skip the long lines and walk right in if you've got a reservation. Unfortunately, the reservation desk was closed by the time we got there. So, our plan was to arrive right at opening time the next morning and hope for the best. The plan worked. We were about 20th in line and so we got in right away. (I did notice that the line was quite long as we were leaving.)
The Uffizi has an incredible collection of art. I was able to relive my college art history classes and share some information about some of the paintings with Jason. It's astounding that so many of the world's most famous paintings are all in this one museum. The museum is, however, quite large. We did manage to meander through it all (it took us over 3 hours). We spent the most time with some of the more famous works and had to just browse as we walked by some of the lesser-known pieces. It'd take a week to really study all of the pieces.
After leaving the Uffizi we grabbed some lunch (pizza, of course) and decided to head over to the Academia, home to the David. Just as with the Uffizi, we had read that we would need a reservation. So we hoped that we'd be able to make a reservation that afternoon to visit the next morning. However, when we arrived there was no line and we were able to walk right in. This gallery is much smaller, and it seemed like most of the tourists darted straight past the art in search of David. We toured the gallery, and, in fact, I was quite surprised when we got to the David. We were walking through the gallery and you turn the corner and suddenly there's this longer corridor and there's David at the end. It's one thing to see pictures, but he's really something that you need to see in person. He's even more amazing than the books tell you. Also, something about him is just captivating. We sat there for 20 minutes or so just looking at him. (I did find it kind of funny that the only seating is in a semi-circle around his back side, so there are all these people sitting there just staring at his bum.) -- The picture here is a replica that's in the square. You weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the museums.
The next day we decided to get out of the city and see the Tuscan countryside. We signed up for a bike tour that included a visit to a vineyard. The vineyard was quite interesting. It's in a 13th century castle that's been in the same family for generations. They make both wine and olive oil, which we got to sample at the end of our tour.
The bike ride through the countryside was gorgeous and one of our favorite parts about Italy. One of our other favorite parts was --- the food! Yum! One night we went to a small trattoria and both ordered the fettuccine with a pistachio pesto sauce. It was delicious. We enjoyed sampling the house wine, though we were a bit surprised the first night when it came out in a pitcher.
Jason, who decided to postpone his pre-race dietary restrictions until the end of the trip, was also quite fond of the gelato. In fact, he decided that someday it would be worthwhile to try to sample gelato from each of the shops. I told him this would be impossible -- it seems that Florence may have more gelaterias than Prague has pubs, but he maintains that he could do it.
The next morning we visited the Duomo. The inside of the cathedral was beautiful, though it isn't as impressive as the Prague Castle -- with the exception of the dome. I had learned about the building of the dome in my art history class and it was neat to actually see it. We tried to climb up to the top of the dome, but there was a power outage in the building so they closed the stairs to the dome. We waited for a bit to see if they could fix the problem, but ultimately we gave up because we had a train to Venice to catch.