Where Rome proved to be a constant series of “wow, that actually looks like I expected it to look,” and “holy shit, I ‘remember’ that,” -style reactions, our Florence-focused leg of our continued tour of Assassin’s Creed sites (I’m only half kidding here; by my count, we’ve been to the places covered in Brotherhood, Unity (hey, we live here), Syndicate, and now II) produced more of a series of “huhs.”
Much like Rome, Florence appears to be nearly entirely populated by tourists (hi, kettle; my name is pot); when this observation escaped my lips (lunch sucked, I had yet to succumb to the siren call of fake gelato, and as such, I may have been a touch trenchant), the Purrito quite rightly pointed out that our original plan had been to go to Venice, and that per several of her crew, that city was even worse.
Thus we found ourselves in Florence. To say that it was a productive trip was an understatement; armed with our Firenze Cards (yes they’re expensive (72€ a pop), and holy shit are the line-skipping privileges alone worth it) we checked nearly everything off of our list (with the exception of the Pitti Palace; the rain on Saturday was simply too miserable to hike all the way over there) and came back with an arguably-obscene amount of pasta, olive oil, and refrigerator magnets.
The undisputed highlight of the trip was the Grande Museo del Duomo, a newly-renovated museum dedicated to the cathedral that dominates the center of the old city. Secondary highlights were my venture to the cupola of the Duomo (463 steps covering 91 vertical meters) and my questionable decision to climb the tower on the Palazzo Vecchio (223 steps, 50-odd vertical meters) a mere couple of hours later.
I’d go back (though perhaps in the off-season).
Fezzik In Paris 