Continued from Siena 2026 Day 3.

Our airbnb host arrived right on time at 10am to pick us up to the train station. While we waited for his father in law to show up too, we had a chat about the Palio and how we are in the contrada of the goose and that’s why there are several goose related items in the house. Apparently, you eat a communal dinner for as many days in a row as the times you’ve won the Palio. I think the goose has won the most so I think they were at 67 (the most winningest contrada), which means if they win again this year, they would need to cook, party, and eat for 68 days in a row. Wow. It’s now July 4th as I’m writing this and the eagle contrada won the latest Palio.

We also gave the host our bottle of wine that we got last night as a thank you gift for the ride. Well, it turns out he knew exactly which restaurant we got the bottle from and apparently he works in a vineyard as his day job….shit. I really do hope we got him a ok bottle of wine then.

Time to go.

It’s not a long drive to the station, but due to the hill nature of the terrain, we snaked our way to our location.

Got dropped off, and our first stop is actually the shopping center right across the train station. There’s a grocery store here where we’ll buy some lunch to eat on the train.

RL went in the grocery store with the kids while I’m on bag watching duty.

So many choices, but really so few choices since I can only buy what I can eat easily on the train.

I took LKL to the potty that was across the platform.

RL took this photo of someone’s hair extensions?

What I got at the grocery store, pizza! One even has hotdog slices on it!

Nom nom nom.

There’s AC in the trains, but it’s still a little bit hot. It’s as if all ACs in Europe only work as well as 80% of cooling needs at max cooling power…and that’s if you’re lucky.

He loves cantalopes.

Looks at them with so much love.

Playing their chopsticks game again.

We took turns sitting in the nice quiet chair away from the kids.

Some of the rails are painted white on the sides. To minimize heat gain so the tracks don’t warp?

Reached Florence, no long delay on the train this time. Well…train still ran late. Again, we’ve had a 100% of our train arrivals be delay here in Italy.

It’s hot, really hot. We’ve got about a 10min walk to our airbnb with our heavy packs on and in the heat, not fun.

It became apparent super fast when we arrived that Florence is the most touristy place we visited this entire trip. Almost every single person we come across on these crowded sidewalks are tourists. Paris had a lot of people, and had a lot of tourists, but walking around, most people are just Parisians going about their day. Not so much here, it’s great majority tourists.

Almost there, our airbnb is just one block away from the Duomo.

Well, two representatives from the airbnb host met us at house to show us everything. It was scheduled that they would meet us, but I forgot to tell RL about it. I didn’t find out until afterward that RL felt ambushed and that they were going to try to force us to sign liability waiver.

Before we even reach the apartment, I was shown where the electrical breakers were in case we lose power…Is this already a bad sign? After losing power in Bologna, I’m now thinking maybe this is a common thing in Italy? I hope we don’t lose power, because it’s hot as fuck here in Florence in the mid 90s.

Our awesome terrace at the top of the airbnb. It’s awesome…but there’s no shade up here.

I didn’t know this at the time, but RL must have felt so uncomfortable since she was surprised that the agents of the airbnb owners were here to show us the place. And not only that, it turns out the girl is actually the daughter of the host. They did show us the liability waiver and gently tried to persuade us to sign, I said we already had a talk with airbnb and airbnb talked to the host and we don’t need to sign. They know this already, so we didn’t sign. Still really annoyed.

This is what $1281 a night gets you in very central Florence just right by the Duomo. This place is more like a house museum than an airbnb. I mean…I kinda understand why they are so anti small children as there’s a lot of breakable art work all over the house.

Everything in the house was clean…except the carpet and the rugs could use a good cleaning just from age…actually the carpets are so old and gross feeling that no amount of cleaning would help.

One of the kitchens. Yup, this apartment is made up of several apartments combined, so we have not one, but two kitchens!

This is a cool bedroom, but it doesn’t have AC so no one actually slept in this room.

Tiny ship’s cabin style toilet and the shower is in the bedroom itself.

The loft area where the girls slept.

The walkway to the left behind the bed leads to the terrace and the area on the other side of the bed is the second kitchen.

It was so hectic and this place is like a sensory overload that RL and I both forgot to take photos of the other two bedrooms, the room that me and RL slept in and the one LKL slept in. Oops.

I mean, this terrace is super cool. I wish it had a shaded area though.

Giant art piece in the dining room. They said the painter was a friend of Klimt…and it looks like he was heavily influenced by Klimt as well. I believe this painting is one of a series.

The liability waiver that the host hoped I would sign.

There’s also another version completely in Italian as well. Yeah…not signing either. But seriously, what’s wrong with airbnb’s boiler plate stuff already? I mean…I don’t ask the hosts to sign a counter liability waiver on their end, right? Either way, BS.

While we were getting settled in, RL had gone out of the apartment and didn’t know how to get out of the front door. She sent me this photo and asked me how to get out? Push the red button?? Yes, that’s how you get out.

Alright, let’s all get out. We don’t feel settled in at Florence, but let’s make the best of it.

All the different color stone work actually looks pretty impressive when seen up close.

We have timed reservations to climb the bell tower. What sucks is that no backpacks are allowed, so I had to check it in at the Duomo luggage check.

Let’s do this. I think 414 steps to the top of the bell tower. Come on everyone, it’ll be good exercise! RL was very unhappy about making this climb.

There’s also a separate climb to the dome, but those timed reservations were all booked by the time I looked at them, oh well. And while writing this post, I did some research into the dome, I went down a long bunny trail into Brunelleschi’s Dome. Quite the engineering feat building the largest masonry dome in the world with stone chains and wooden chains to keep it from spreading apart and destroying itself. Maybe if we have time, we’ll go into the cathedral itself and look at it under as well, even though it’s a double layered dome and you can only see the inner dome from inside.

Getting tired.

Maybe halfway?

Oh look, it’s the terrace of our Airbnb. And that skylight is the girl’s room.

Of course, like everything old, it’s always some sort of renovation. Here’s the scaffolding outside of the bell tower for the construction workers.

There are the bells. I wonder why some of them are boarded up?

Maybe this once held the chain for the bells that would hang under?

Alright, made it to the very top where it’s all caged in.

Our Airbnb is on the left side of the pic right by the building with all the construction netting outside. We are literally one block away from the duomo, which in retrospect was maybe not the best choice since it’s just way too crowded here.

I mean, the dome is pretty cool I guess. I think I’ve seen to many giant cathedrals that any amazement I feel would be diluted.

She came out and took a photo. CL did not want to come out, she was scared of heights. She didn’t even want to come out and walk around the walkway.

Not quite as tall as the dome. I wish I could have climbed the dome, not so much to get a higher view, but just to be able to climb between the inner and outer dome to look at how it’s engineered and constructed.

Alright, back on the ground. That was a lot of work walking up and down narrow staircases full of people.

Now, it’s dinner time. It’s still early around 5pm, we are already very hungry since we had a light lunch on the train ride.

Tito’s made it all the way to Florence!

Kids wanted this, and we’ve been eating Italian food for so many meals in a row, the adults wanted it too.

We found what seemed to be the only sushi place around our Airbnb, and not only that, it’s all you can eat style. We are hungry so we put it away, and also asked for like 5 refills of water carafe since it’s so fucking hot and in Europe they give you these tiny carafes that barely fills up 5 cups halfway.

Fried Rice!!! I don’t know why, but this sounded so good to me and indeed hit the spot.

PL ordered these because they are pink.

Close out my night with some F1 Qualifying.

And the kids close out their night with some iPad time. Unsure if we’ll ever feel settled here in Florence with the crowds. The plan is to not do too much here and not get too overwhelmed.

Saw this inside our Airbnb info book for guests. Is this the oldest building I’ve ever stayed in? It’s so old, it existed and people lived and died here when The Plague was happening. Wow.

To be continued at Florence 2026 Day 2.