When Sarah first suggested Italy, the answer was yes even though it would be a short trip. Overall I do believe it’s better to go for a short period of time than not go at all but seriously, Florence, Italy in one day!?? Who does that?

Terrible idea, for the record. I mean, glorious, but terrible.

I flew in to Florence from Prague by way of Paris, making it a three language kind of day. Already Italian is easier for me than German since I have a Spanish language background. But even though I think I know what I’m talking about,  I’m continually pronouncing everything wrong . Fortunately Sarah’s Italian is decent, better than her Russian but not as good as her German, French, English or Spanish. I would hate her just a little bit out of sheer jealousy except she’s just so darn adorable.

She’s basking in our 15 minutes of sun today. Sigh. Florence for one day and it poured rain? Why why why!

Anyway, we each managed to find our airbnb flat in Florence last night. I always consider finding someone in a foreign country a bit of a miracle since my phone doesn’t work unless it’s connected to wifi. How did we function before cell phones? I hardly remember.

We went out for a glass of wine and see our neighborhood, the Oltrarno right by the Ponte Vecchio, a beautiful unusual bridge full of shops that dates back to the medieval era.

The rest of our neighborhood is a hilly little warren of shops and cathedrals and restaurants and the occasional teenager hanging out. This was my favorite picture of the evening.

Italians and their pizza. Not a myth.

This morning Sarah came out to the living room to tell me – somewhat worriedly – that we had no hot water in the shower. She’s Swiss and frugal so she let it run for two seconds and then took a 2 minute cold shower. I let it run for 5 minutes and voila! hot water!

Other cultural differences showed themselves at breakfast. Please guess which side of this table belongs to the American.

Over breakfast we made a somewhat sketchy plan for the day that included seeing Il Duomo – one of Europe’s biggest cathedrals and Florence’s show piece – and then going to the Galleria to see Michelangelo’s David, having lunch at the mercato centrale, “seeing a few more things” taking a break around 5 and having dinner around 7. Piece of cake. Best of Florence in one day. Gentlemen, start your engines. It hadn’t yet rained at this point so optimism was running high.

Wow. Il Duomo. Just wow.

So big. So pretty with all that pink and white and green. Like a humongous birthday cake.

And almost impossible to photograph, of course. Also full of tourists with lines out the door to get in, so Sarah and I said “Nope” and we went around the corner to Giotto’s Campanile, the bell tower, where it just so happened we could climb up inside and get a better view of the Duomo.

Climb a tower? Don’t mind if we do.

Stairs up these towers are no joke and this one was an up/down staircase requiring everyone to flatten to either side of the wall/railing to let the opposing traffic stream get by. Only slightly hazardous and in Europe, just another day.

414 steps. 85 meters high. The views? Spectacular.

How pretty does that Duomo look now? This cathedral took 170 years to build, which means no one who designed it or began the project lived to see it completed. I try to picture an architect now making plans for the grandest building of his life that he’ll never see finished and I can’t do it.

Notice all those tiny people up in the cupola around the Duomo dome? Yes, our tower ticket included the privileged possibility of yet another tower climb that day, should we so desire. But the day was still young so we forgot about it and just attempted the first of many selfies.

The results of which were mixed and the attempting of which was hilarious.

 When it started to rain at 11, Sarah got a bit outraged. “Kaitlyn, you said it was supposed to rain at noon! It’s 11!” The rain eventually drove us off the roof and we headed down only to find a steady stream of visitors trying to get up. We’d timed our visit perfectly since now that it was raining, everyone wanted to be inside a building somewhere and lines for the campanile were now out the door and across the plaza.

We walked through the rain to the Mercato Centrale, a farmers”s market on the bottom floor selling the gorgeous fresh produce for which Italy is justly famous

And a food court on top selling gorgeous antipasti for which Italy is also famous.

That’s a trufffle antipasti with mushrooms, mozzarella, proscuitto and tomatoes covered with shaved slices of truffle. The mushrooms and truffle were particularly delish.

After our fortifying snack, we went onward into the rain. By this point it was pouring and when we finally found the Accademia Gallery, the lines consisted of a thousand umbrellas covering damp tourists lined up along the walls and around the corners. I had that sinking feeling that everyone in Florence would be inside the gallery taking selfies in front of the most famous statue in the world and trying to stay out of the rain.

We talked about not doing it. Standing in line sucks and standing in line in the rain simply for the privilege of swimming through a crowd of damp tourists sucks even more, which brings up the major problem with spending only a day in a major city: the wait times. Technically it’s possible to see all of Florence’s major sites in a day if you have a good pair of shoes, a lot of energy and an endless capacity for history, art and culture. Don’t waste time taking photographs, talking to anyone or absorbing much of Florence’s street culture and you can do it.

Except for the wait times! Everyone in town wants to see all the same stuff you do and it’s simply impossible to figure out when the “off times” are and the lines are shortest. More time is wasted waiting in line than traveling from one thing to another, for sure. So at a certain point you have to commit to what you want to see and get zen with the queue.

Sarah and took a deep breath, prepared ourselves for a wait and got in line. Fortunately the line wasn’t that bad and we were inside the gallery in about 30 minutes. And it wasn’t even that crowded inside the gallery! How’s that for a tourist win? Plus that statue took my breath away.

The thing is, when you see a painting in real life that you’ve only ever seen in pictures, there’s a visceral thrill of realness. The colors are always slightly different, paint textures, size, impact etc. But a statue? No picture can convey the impact of a piece of sculpture, The weight, the sheer size, the details, the way you can walk around it and see every side and every angle. It’s breathtaking.

I’ve seen pictures of David a thousand times but never noticed how giant his hands were sculpted, completely out of proportion to his body. And the veins on his arms and neck are so striking. It’s odd to me that body musculature is so fantastic and realistic and his head and hair are so stylized and yet the whole effect is one of realness and life. I also had no idea he was so gigantic. Here’s a terrible picture for scale.

Thank God that plinth is so high because he towers over everyone and it’s possible to photograph him from any angle without getting other people in the picture.

We spent a long time here just looking at him. Most visitors to this gallery did as well. I saw a lot of people put down their cameras and just take him in with their human eyes, a phenomenon that doesn’t happen often these days. I don’t know why he has such an impact but he really does.

Nothing else in the gallery compares to him, just medieval triptychs aplenty. But he’s worth the wait and the admission ticket.

The rest of the afternoon went quickly. We had to abandon our plans to visit the Uffizi Gallery because there simply wasn’t time. Sorry Botticelli, next time! And instead we went back to the Duomo, hoping the lines were shorter. They weren’t. But they also went quickly. We had good queueing karma today.

The inside of the Duomo, however, was disappointing and boring. It’s the emptiest cathedral I’ve ever seen and all the glory is outside. We did take a peek into the crypt at the remains of the older cathedral. This space dedicated to Santa Reparata dates back to 1-4AD and il Duomo was built on her remains. That floor is 2000 years old. Insane.

And then we went across the plaza to the Baptistery, the last remaining building of the Duomo congregation. Unlike the Duomo, the Baptistery is stunning inside. it looks the way I expected the Duomo to look.

And the ceiling murals are covered in gold leaf.

The sole purpose of this building is baptisms. It’s just a small octagonal chapel with a baptismal font. For centuries, all the kids in Florence were baptized here yearly on March 25, the day of Mary’s Annunciation, and artistically this baptistery is a much more beautiful space than the Duomo.

So, at this point we were – as you probably also are – exhausted. The afternoon was completely gone, our time frame was but a fleeting memory and the only question was: have a glass of wine now or climb the last tower of the day?

I opted for the tower since I’ve never climbed two towers in Europe in one day and Sarah agreed under a tiny bit of duress. Her breakfast brioche hadn’t carried her as far as my omelette gigante. Ultimately, it was the last event on our ticket so we went for it.

Good Lord, that climb. I’ve never seen stairs like that and at this point I’ve climbed a lot of towers. There were circular stairs and tiny stairs, super low stairs, two way stairs, stairs that went completely vertical like a ladder and stairs that arched over the dome

If someone fell down those stairs, I don’t know how they’d get them out.

464 stairs later, we made it to the top where a small waist-high railing simply suggested that perhaps we should take caution and we could look down upon the Campanile and say “remember when we thought that was high?”

The sun came out for a few brief minutes at the top of this dome, we reveled in all our climbing and then we somehow got back down those stairs, past all the the opposing stream of traffic coming up the stairs and that was the end of our day in Florence.

I leave you here with yet another piece of breathtaking sculpture, outside the Uffizi gallery where we had our well deserved glass of wine in the Piazza della Signorina

Firenze, you’ve been a pleasure and a delight. I’ll come back any time.

And now we’ve rented a car. Get ready Chianti country, we’re coming for you!