Florence 25 May

Sabine woke this morning with her ankle still pretty sore but re-did the bandage and felt she would be OK to head out.  Our first stop after breakfast was the cathedral where there was quite a queue so I joined the queue while Sabine sat down until we got close to the entrance, probably took the best part of 30 minutes.  Very impressive inside like most churches in Italy. When we came out we ran into a couple from Adelaide who we first met in Ventimiglia when we encountered the train strike.  They told us the queues for the Uffizi Gallary and the Academy Gallery were very long so we decided to give them a miss. Went and visited another amazing church near the station (Santa Maria Novella, same name as the station) and then went through town and crossed the river to the Palazzo Pitti where we visited a silver and porcelain museum and a costume gallery, we were there about two hours, there was a lot of interesting things to see.  When we left there the queue to get in was very long (it was nothing when we went in) so that was luck. When we were in the museum we got a text from our friends Sue and Graeme who had just arrived in Florence so we called in to see them in their apartment and had a good catch up. They are only 5 to ten minutes walk from our hotel so we came back to freshen up and we are all going out to dinner soon.  Tomorrow morning we are off to Venice.