After two night in Munich we headed down to Italy. We were going to stop and have a late lunch in Bologna, and then head down to Florence for a few nights. Then up to Milan and back to the States.

Espresso in Italy. My favorite place to get it.

We arrived in the evening from Bologna and did what everyone does - we walked over to see the Duomo. They started working on this building in 1296. I think they officially finished in the 1800s with the facade, and then immediately set about restoring it.

Here's the bell tower. These are beautiful buildings.

We got up the next morning and went back so that we could go inside, and also climb up to the top to enjoy the view.

The interior of the dome has a huge fresco designed by Vasari. This church took so long to build that many people had a huge hand in its creation.

The fresco has scenes from the bible, notably judgment day. This is the section here for the non-believers - hell. Look at the size of the images compared to the people standing right below them.

This is the view looking down into the church.

Look at this one! Some lizard-headed creature is beating this guy!

We continued climbing and popped out on the roof.

You can see people across the way on the top of the bell tower.

That big church over there is Santa Croce. See how the front is white, and the rest is brown? That's the marble facade.

Here's my dad up on the roof.

This is the stairwell down! You need to be careful, that's for sure.

Here's my dad at Santa Croce. There are a bunch of famous guys buried here - Michelangelo, Marconi, Machiavelli, and Galileo among them.

In the background there you can see that the altar is undergoing restoration. The tombs are arranged around the perimeter of the church.

Here's Dante gazing fiercely over the square in front of the church.

We walked over to the Uffizi and hung around for a while. We didn't go in, we were all arted out from the Louvre.

Here's Galileo and Micheli, apparently waiting for the bus. See how Micheli appears to be looking at his mobile phone. And Galileo is all, "Jeebus, you'd think the bus would run more than once an hour!"

We walked over to the Ponte Vecchio so I could revisit the location where I decided to buy a motorcycle.

We saw this guy. It's Benvenuto Cellini who lived during the Renaissance. He was a goldsmith and is featured here on the bridge because this is where everyone would go to buy their gold. (It's still lined with jewelry shops today.) Of course this guy was also a painter, a sculptor, a soldier, and a musician. The Renaissance makes all of us in the modern age look like slackers. My bust will say, "He watched TV, rode around in his car, and could eat his weight in sushi."

All this history was making us hungry so we headed to...

This is a place that Phyllis and Paul took us on our first trip to Italy a few years ago. It's a "buca" which means it's located in the basement of the building.

You go in on street level then duck down a short flight of stairs.

The atmosphere is excellent.

We had a few glasses of wine.

As an appetizer we had sausage with some white beans.

I had some kind of ravioli. It was amazing.

As we wandered around we ended up back over by the Palazzo Vecchio and saw Neptune and one of his pin-headed mermaids.

One one of the days we walked up to see the view from the Michelangelo Park. Here my dad consults the map so we can figure out what we are looking at.

Ok, that's it. Thanks for looking.