Italy, pt. IV

After leaving Venice, we sped on down to Florence to spend a night and fully embrace ourselves in some fine art.  Driving to Florence is not fun, let me tell you.  But we managed somehow to find a free parking spot close enough to the Duomo and somehow miraculously made our way in, ate some DELICIOUS apple and sage gnocchi at the Accademia restaurant (it was Sunday and we honestly thought everything might be closed because we didn't see anything open for the longest time) and promptly went to go see David before the museum closed.  After walking around the Accademia, we moseyed over to the leather market and then through the rest of the city center.  Once again, I had some gelato (this time, fresh fig) and tried again to buy something but to no avail.

Florence has such amazing artwork and architecture.  While it definitely wasn't my favorite, I enjoyed its beauty.  There was certainly a lot to see every direction we turned.  Perhaps if we had more than one day in Florence to enjoy everything we would have felt differently.  But we were too excited to have found time to pass through Tuscany.  And I won't even go into the horrors of trying to find our hotel, but we had to stop for a drink because it got that frustrating.

The next morning, we packed up and hit the road and quickly got off to enter Chianti.  It was so exciting!  We weren't really sure where to go, and we needed to be in Rome later that day but we just wanted to stop somewhere and enjoy the beauty and tasty wine.  We did!  We stopped at Badia a Coltibuono and had a delicious lunch paired with very delicious Chianti and Sangiovese.  The view was spectacular and the staff were so friendly.  I was sad to have to leave so soon but at least a storm was rolling in and we had Rome to look forward to.

There I am, immensely enjoying the exquisite albeit expensive wine...

Ah, Tuscany.  I do love you. 

* Today I fell in love with Picnik, as you may have noticed by the difference in the pictures.  I'll never not use it now.