Today we travel to Florence. We board the Vaporetto at the Rialto Bridge to get back to the mainland to board our coach. We have a 4 hour ride ahead of us. It is getting hot again. I am glad to be on an air-conditioned bus! On the way to Florence, I saw vineyards, fruit trees and fields of sunflowers. I also saw a few castles along the way. We stopped for an hour at the Autogrill for lunch. The closer we got to Florence, the hillier it got. We were in Tuscany. We passed through many tunnels before arriving in Florence around 2:15 pm. Jean let us off at Piazza di Santa Maria and we walked to our hotel. This hotel is like a palace! My room has frescos on the ceiling! We re-grouped at 4 pm for an orientation tour with Jody. We saw the Baptistry Doors, walked around the Duomo, got gelato, visited Palazzo Vecchio where we saw the huge Neptune Fountain with white horses, then walked past the Uffizi Gallery. We passed Piazza della Repubblica, the old Roman Square. We visited the Accademia. The line was not long. We toured at our leisure. I saw David and a lot of other sculptures as well as the musical instruments which were really interesting. After our visit, we headed for the restaurant for our group dinner. We returned to our hotel at 9:30 pm and it was lights out!

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