Moving on to Venezia...

On our second morning in Florence, we woke up with a plan to check-out, catch the first open-air bus to head over to Santa Croce and the Leather School. And for the first time this trip, our plan WORKED! YES!

We got over to Santa Croce a bit early, so we decided to walk around, take some pictures and look in some of the tourist-trap stores around the square. This is Tim walking down one of many side streets.

 I love the doors! They're all so different, but this one really stood out to me...

 This is Santa Croce, the church this whole area is named after.  It is the final resting place for many famous Italians, including Michelangelo and Galileo.

 Also in Santa Croce is the National Central Library, which is the largest in Italy. This is just one side, the front is HUGE!

 And I had to include some good ol' Italian graffiti...

 Here's a picture of us in front of the Basilica di Santa Croce...

Around the corner from the front is the Scuola del Cuoio, better known as the Leather School of Florence. I first visited this place in 2007, when I took a study abroad trip with my major and it is, hands down, the best place to get leather accessories in Florence.

To get to the actual school and their shop, you have to walk through a courtyard behind the Basilica...this is view: 

So why is this the best place to get leather accessories? Because you can get this embossed or stamped with gold/silver leaf!

 Tim got himself a passport cover...

 And we got our Dads wallets for Father's Day...let's just say this guy had to use a lot of "W" tiles!

 After finishing up there, we went back to the Duomo to see the inside. We caught a glimpse at a Japanese couple taking photographs on the steps...

 The inside is ginormous, but I think Tim and I both agree that the outside is the really fantastic part. This is the bell tower:

 Oh, and that's 100% marble!!

We grabbed some gelato, relaxed on the Duomo steps for a few minutes before heading back to our amazing hotel, collecting our bags and walking to the train station. Our next stop: VENEZIA!

Our next hotel was just awesome. Here we are on our terrace...yep, you read that right! Our room was on the 5th floor, separate from the rest of the hotel, with an outside entrance to a terrace overlooking the Grand Canal. SO.AMAZING.

 The concierge/front desk guy suggested we buy a 48-hour pass for the Vaparetto (water bus) and take that to explore the city. This the entrance to the Vaparetto stop that was about 100 steps from our hotel lobby. The "1" line is the most touristy line and stops at EVERY.SINGLE.STOP along the Grand Canal.

 Our destination for the evening was the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. For those of you who don't know Peggy Guggenheim's story, well, she was a bit nutty. She vowed, at one point, to collect 1 piece of art per day. Her family also has the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art in NYC. This small museum is her former home in Venice. Only the first floor was ever completed, so that's the entire museum. We arrived 40 minutes before closing and had no problem seeing the entire collection. But I loved it! And we both loved getting a bit of "brain break" from the massive art museums we'd previously been touring.

 After running over to the museum, we decided to stroll back to the Vaparetto through some narrow streets and head to the Rialto Bridge area for dinner. The weather and timing was perfect for some pictures from the center of the bridge, looking down the Canal.

 Unfortunately our camera died right after this picture...in the hands another tourist who had offered to take our picture...FAIL! :-)

Our dinner that evening was so good and it really emphasized the value of freshly-prepared pasta.  I'm not a big pasta fan, but my tagliatelle pasta was beyond amazing.

Stay tuned, our next day proved to be one of the most adventurous of our lives...