Travel Guide: A Day in Pisa and Florence

I am finally getting around to recapping the amazing trip I took with my family to Europe at the end of July! We took a cruise through Italy, France, and Spain on Celebrity Cruises and it was absolutely amazing, completely restorative, and so much fun! I still am shocked at the amount of ground we were able to cover in only 9 days! Because I spent each day in a totally new and different place (and took so many pictures in each city!), I’m going to break up my trip review into multiple posts.

On our first day, we woke up bright and early in Livorno and spent the day in Pisa and Florence!

This is what they call the “Field of Miracles” in Pisa. Construction on these buildings began in the 1100s… over 800 years ago.

Sorry NOT SORRY. You’ve got to take this photo when you’re in Pisa, no one is too cool for this I promise!

(Weird/ Funny/ Gross Side Note: I actually was in Pisa on a school trip when I was a junior in high school and I got a horrible stomach bug/ flu/ mystery illness and threw up all over the “Field of Miracles.” So basically the fact that I didn’t vom all over a beautiful historic site made this visit a success! #lowbar)

Mastered the two-hand photo (so much more difficult than it seems!)

The Leaning Tower looks so cool in person, and for some reason I feel like my photos couldn’t even capture the extent of the lean. I can’t believe that it’s stayed standing for all these years. Now that is a miracle!

After spending the morning in Pisa, we spent the rest of the day in Florence. I had been to Florence before for a few days, but it had been 10 years (time flies!) since I’ve been there, so I was super excited to be back for a day. There’s so much to see in Florence, and of course you can’t see it all in just a day, but since we’d been there before we had a good idea of what we wanted to focus on.

Such a beautiful city!

When we found out that we’d be going to Florence, we knew that we wanted to try and get tickets to see Michelangelo’s David in the Academia. It is the most stunning sculpture I’ve ever seen, and it really is the perfect symbol, along with the Duomo, for the amazing accomplishments and art that came out of the Italian Renaissance.

The lines to see the David can be massive, so you’ve got to make sure to get your tickets online ahead of time. We probably only had to wait maybe 10 minutes to get inside, which freed up the rest of our day to explore.

After we finished up, we walked out and took in the beauty of the Duomo!

We also stopped for lunch and grabbed some delicious pizzas in the shadow of the Duomo.

Absolutely breathtaking.

The Duomo is Florence’s most famous landmark. When they originally started building it they didn’t have the technology to create the dome, but they figured that by the time they finished someone would have figured it out. I love how much confidence they had in themselves! And sure enough, Brunelleschi stepped in and figured out a way to create the dome, and the gorgeous skyline of Florence was made.

Of course we had to have gelato!

(For those of you wondering, I’m wearing a dress, necklace, and sandals from Madewell)

All of the main sites in Florence are close together, so you can walk everywhere. After exploring the Duomo we continued toward the Palazzo Vecchio.

This is the Uffizi Gallery, where the Birth of Venus is displayed. We didn’t have time to go in this trip, but I still can remember being blown away by the artwork there the last time we were here!