Museo de Leonardo da Vinci, Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore

Some randoms around Florence.

Above: enjoy some random whitespace courtesy of Blogger's weird WYSIWYG formatter. There are two Leonardo "museums" in Firenze, with models and interactive displays based on Leonardo's works.  This one was quite fun and offered good educational opportunities as well as welcome shade from the heat! Below: more random whitespace.

An exercise machine designed by Leonardo.  Just to prove to my REI fitness bootcamp friends that I'm not slacking off on vacation.  Much.

Cool arch building demo.  We talked about the strength of arches and circles.  That same conversation - and this demonstration - came up when we visited the submarine in Brittany and talked about the round pressure hull.

Leonardo's lyre.  Turn your head to the right and you'll see it's a dragon head, with the horns comfortably accommodating the player's arms.

After visiting the Leonardo Museum it was time to visit the Academie.  Most people go to the Academie solely to view Michelangelo's David but the rest of the collection is excellent as well. David is MASSIVE and very imposing  in person.  The room in which the statue is displayed does a good job of communicating the scale and grace of the figure.  Pictures don't do the sculpture justice, it must be seen in person to be appreciated. We spent some time after exploring the rest of the collection at the Academie. After finishing with the Academie, we made our way over to the Basilica and decided to climb the Duomo for the best view in all of Florence.  The Duomo is  very hot inside and almost oven-like due to the crowd of people and hot air trapped inside. Click into the panorama.  It's kinda badass. Also kinda badass. The Duomo was built as a "dome within a dome" so it's very strong, it's also interesting as it represents the first successful example of large-scale dome building since the fall of the Roman empire (the technology required to build domes like this was lost during the Dark Ages). After descending from the Duomo we engaged in the Italian tradition of having gelato at "Grom", an excellent organic gelateria just around the corner from the Cathedral. Gelato complete, we made a visit to the baptistry on our way out of town.  Photography is allowed inside the baptistry but (disappointingly) not inside the Cattedrale.