After a bit of a scramble getting out of the house, we drove to New Jersey to fly out of the Newark airport, because parking there was much more affordable than New York City. We took off at sunset, transferred planes in London in the early morning, and were due to fly into Florence at 11:30am, but the airport has a short runway, and weather conditions would not allow us to land there, so we were rerouted to Pisa, and then waited to be transferred to a bus, to drive the 1.5 hours to Florence.

This was a bit perplexing since long prior we had bought timed tickets to get into the the Galleria dell’Accademia to see Michelangelo’s David. Our tickets were for 3pm which we thought had allowed us enough wiggle room. Now with our three hour delay, it was starting to look like we were going to miss it.

But we refused to fret, and after dropping off our luggage at our hotel, we walked to the line we were supposed to be in and smoothly merged with our time slot, with a minute to spare. Behind us in line was a couple from Amarillo, Texas, where my husband is from. Welcome to Florence, and welcome to our small world.

Below you can see my photos from the museum and its gift shop, then we scoped out the Central Market where we plan to have lunch the next day, and did a bit of shopping with the vendors there. (My husband bought a belt and wallet, and I got a turquoise leather glasses case.) We finished our extra long day with a lovely dinner at Tratoria Zaza near our hotel, where I had an amazing Eggplant Parmesan, and our first Italian gelato.  Our hotel is perfectly located, thankfully with a good bed, and an amazing lobby ceiling. After being up for 36 hours, finally we sleep.

Our adventure has begun!