Cruise Day 6: Florence

So, at the beginning of the cruise, I came down with a nasty cold and sore throat. This isn’t exactly ideal when you are trying to run around every port and see as much as possible. Also, I was coughing so bad that I could barely sleep at night, and if you know me, you know I need my sleep to be a normal human being. We had made our normal plans on Friday to wake up early, get off the boat as soon as possible, to catch an even longer train from Livorno, where our boat was, to Florence. But after a long night of not sleeping, I just couldn’t get out of bed. Blake was a sweetheart and let me sleep in a bit, and we took our time getting off the boat. Which of course meant we had even less time in Florence because we missed every fast train and had to wait an extra 40 minutes to even get on the hour and a half train ride to Florence. But we made it there eventually, and went first to the Duomo.

After some confusion of which 500 staircases we wanted to walk up, we chose to go up in the Duomo itself, which I think was the right choice. The dome itself has an interesting painting of the devil that typically isn’t found in most churches. The view was really nice, but you were so sweaty and gross by the time you made it up all the stairs, all you really appreciate is the fresh air.
After that we made our way to the famous bridge, took some pictures, and then it was about time for the Uffizi museum, which we had made reservations for. After our close call the day before in Rome with the trains, we had made sure to check the train schedule of when we had to be at the train station in Florence in order to make it back on the boat in time. We figured we should leave the museum by 3:30, which was unfortunate because our reservations were for 2:15. (It was the only time available.) So we had to rush through the Uffizi, which is one of the greatest collections of renaissance art on the earth, but you do what you have to do. Again, hopefully we will be back someday!

But we made the train back in time, and our last day in Nice promised to be much more relaxing.