Day 5 - Florence and Michelangelo's David

Today was our day to go into Florence (Firenze). The trip there was a 40 minute drive to Montevarchi, with a 45 minute train ride to Florence. Once there, we saw many of the shops, most of them very well-known names: Gucci, Prada, McDonalds, etc. There was also a section of town with nothing but a string of jewelry shops, selling mostly gold chains and earrings. Most of it was very nice, and Mackenzie got her third pair of earrings there (yikes). After that we wandered over to the central square where we had lunch at a restaurant that was near the base of a big clock tower. It looked to me that it was about 30 stories high, sitting at the top of a castle-like structure (hmm, maybe it was a castle... ) . The food was very good and very reasonably priced - which we learned when we got the bill was due to the fact that they make their money on the "grande" drinks, which ran 8 euros for iced tea and cokes (yes folks, that's about $11) and 9 euros for the beers (at least those of us who got beer felt like we got more of our moneys worth). Needless to say, we started asking prices before ordering from here on. Once we were done there, we went to see Michelangelo's David. Wow, that was cool! Much more impressive in real life that it is in pictures. When you think that is was done a half a millennia ago and realize there were no CAD machines or Dremmel tools, you realize just what an impressive feat it is to sculpt something like that, especially from a solid piece of marble.

We finished up there and took the train back to Montevarchi, where we took a scenic drive back to, you guessed it, Radda in Chianti for a not-so-nice, somewhat over-priced meal (you can't win 'em all, but we still like Radda)