Venice & Florence Travel Diary

After packing up and leaving our hostel in Verona, we headed to the train station to start the next stage of our trip, Florence. On the way we stopped in Venice for a few hours, which was beautiful, but completely rammed with tourists and very very hot. I’d recommend booking a trip to Venice out of peak season so you can appreciate the city properly.

We finally arrived in Florence and checked into our Airbnb. (The Magnificent in San Lorenzo.) Florence is renown for its art and architecture so one of the first places we headed to was the Duomo, a huge cathedral in the centre of the city. Florence is the perfect location for mooching around and soaking up the Italian culture, with an abundance of sculptures and gallery’s, many of which are free to enter.

For an impressive panoramic view of the city, head to the south bank of Arno River and visit Piazzale Michelangelo square, where you can have a cold beer and look out across the entirety of Florence. Just don’t do what we did and end up trekking up a random dirt track when there’s a clearly signed route to the top!

When it comes to food and drink in Florence I’d recommend getting a pizza at ‘Simbiosi restaurant' on Via De' Ginori. It was hands down the best pizza I've ever eaten as well as being really affordable and I still dream about it to this day.

On the same street I also really recommend La Menagere, a really trendy cocktail bar and restaurant where we spent most nights drinking yet more aperol spritz!

On our last day in Florence we stumbled across the Church of Santa Croce, stuffed our selves with more pasta and then visited Mercarto Centrale, a huge open air market selling seafood, fresh fruit and veg, cheese and more. We stopped for a coffee before wandering around and picking up some ingredients for dinner.