BK's Travel Blog: Florence Day 2

6/10 started out like all days, meeting in the hotel lobby to head out on our scheduled tours/sight-seeing. The first stop of our day was an antique pharmacy museum near the center of Florence which was the pharmacy for Santa Maria Novella. As soon as we walked in the first thing that hit us were the many fragrances. The first room had many perfumes and it was extremely strong once you were in the room, so much so that my head started to hurt after being in there for a couple minutes. It was funny because one of the Professors we were with said, these smells are suppose to be becoming to men, right now they make my head hurt and want to leave. I definitely agreed with that. After we moved from that room we saw some old pharmacy tools of the trade and some frescoes that had been painted in the building. After the tour of the pharmacy museum we actually had the rest of the day to ourselves.

We decided to climb the cupola of the Duomo to get a view of Florence. The views were pretty amazing and I don't know if this is true or not, but I felt like this dome was higher than the St. Peters dome and I didn't like walking on the narrow pathways completely open around the dome inside the basilica. After our climb up and the view we climbed down and got some lunch before basically shopping the rest of the day. We shopped until like 6 or 7 and I bought some gifts for the family and myself. Along the way we stopped on the Ponte Vecchio, the bridge with all the jelwery shops.

After a day of shopping and seeing Florence our bus took us out into the countryside of Florence for a dinner at a place that made its own wine and olive oil. The dinner was really good and there was live music throughout the night. After dinner we went out back to the place along the river, however near this place was a small sandy area with some Tiki hut things that we hung out in and drank some wine. Although we didn't have a lot planned for the day we still had a fun day.