Pants off to the Duomo

Tuesday night we spent on the train going from Budapest to Vienna and then Vienna to Florence. To keep within the budget I had purchased normal seats rather than a sleeper car, some anticipated 12 hours on the train in an upright position not very conducive to sleeping. What we thought was going to be a sleepless night turned out to be a interrupted sleep full night. We were lucky to find ourselves in a train car with only 3 out of the 6 seats full, this allowed for us to recline the seats into a an almost flat position which connected them to the other almost flat seat. Although I do not have my brothers ability to basically sleep sitting up, both Jorie and I found the train to be conducive to sleep.

We arrived in Florence just as the sky was beginning to lighten and the sun was about to come around the corner of the earth. We were wandering the streets of Florence before the rest of the city was up, it was amazing to have the city to ourselves for a few hours before it became a zoo of people. We stumbled upon the Duomo and we able to admire the huge church with no one else around (very rare). The first time I saw the Duomo was when I was 12 with my mother, ever since then I have held it up as the most impressive church because of my memory of it being so grand and like nothing else I had seen up until that point. The Duomo is still incredibly impressive but my perspective of it is completely different now. Jorie and I have seen so many breathtaking churches in the past three weeks. They are all unique and special in there own way, but most on the outside are architectural artworks and then the inside is where the fine detailed are expressed in painting, sculpting, gilding and woodwork. However, the Duomo is the exception to this, the outside is overwhelming with the amount of detail on such a massive scale. You could spend years looking at the intricate details on the outside. The inside is much simpler and not very distinct, that is apart from the dome itself (which has breathtaking paintings that look like they are alive).

Anyways, more on the Duomo later. We continued to wander until we found a wonderful cafe across from Santa Croce Square. It was rather picturesque as we ate and sipped tea as the mopeds went by. The markets were in full swing after breakfast... In the other cities we have been in the markets have been colored with all varieties of fruits and vegetables and have a wafting smell of fresh bread. Although we did walk through one market like that in Florence, the majority of them where colored instead with all shades of browns and blacks and smelled of amazing leather. There is everything you could ever want made out of leather in these markets. We could resist, we shopped (in the sense we went into tons of stores and refrained from buying). As we walked the crowed streets our eyes constantly wandered to the gelato shops (I felt like my brother Peter) and we plotted which one was the most deserving of us. A friend, Annie Riley, suggested that we pick one food and try it in every country we go to and then at the end report on which country has the best. She suggested fried chicken, we have decided ice cream!!!

By the time we went back to the Duomo to go inside, the line was rapped around half the church. Ice cream occupied our wait time... When we got the enterance of the church the security guard wouldn't let us in in our shorts. We scrambled, I tied my jacket around my legs and Jorie whipped out her shopping bag with her new pants and asked where she could change. The man pointed us to just inside the enterence, we expected there to be a bathroom there to change in. Oh no, it ws just the side of the enterance, so in a complete giggle fit I blocked Jorie as she changed. Yes, Jorie Ohlson dropped her pants in the Duomo, it was so funny.

After lunch we took caught the bus to San Casciano Val di Pesa, our new home for the next week. We were a tad bit nervous because lately we have heard more negative things than positive about WWOOFing (the farming group we went through). We were both so ready to be in the country and get our hands dirty but we had so many questions as to what the next week would look like. we were both also very excited to meet Kirstie and Pascal, the two owners of the olive farm.

This is getting long so more about the farm later...


Randomness...
- we hate the smell of cities...
- Jorie calls a bathrobes, a night jacket.
- we found peanut butter before boarding the train, this felt like a gift from God. Why is it that America is the only country that really likes peanut butter?
- why aren't there female taxi driver?
- it feels like just about everyone in Europe smokes... Don't they know it's bad for you?
- we have started to find ways around paying for bathrooms everywhere... We now feel more like seasoned travelers.