Piazzale di Michelangelo (Michelangelo’s Square) – to think we almost skipped this place. We only had one day in Florence (we had booked tours to other towns already for our other two days in Florence) and we couldn’t fit this at the end of our day. So on our last MORNING in Florence, we decided to suck it up, drag ourselves out of bed at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. and go catch the sunrise. Yes, it’s a little earlier (Ok, A LOT earlier) than I would normally like to wake up but it was absolutely, 110% completely worth it! Who needs sleep? Sleep is for the weak! A vacation is not a time to be catching up on your zzzs, but a time to be exploring and discovering new things. I should probably mention that it is somewhat of a hike to get up there. Not a crazy intense hike, but it will definitely be a little taxing on your legs. But it IS a view of all of Florence after all! What great view doesn’t come with a small price to pay? I think the more popular time to visit Piazzale di Michelangelo would be during the sunset – when you’re actually awake and alert to witness all its beauty. But that also means that you’d have to fight the other tourists for a prime viewing spot. When we went, we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. Anyone we saw there didn’t look like they were tourists. They were either joggers, or locals who took a few photographs and left. Which means, we had the whole space to take stupid touristy jumping pictures! I mean come on….ya gotta do it!

Florence was a very unique city. It has this old town feeling to it. There are so many other nearby cities you can visit and it would all be a very different experience. You could take a coastline hike. You could visit some vineyards. That’s the best part of Tuscany. You’ll never run out of things to do. I will definitely be back to explore some of the other sights it has to offer. Especially since my schedule was so filled. I sacrificed sleep for exploring Italy. (which is also probably why I got sick at the end of the trip)

But for now, I’ll leave you with one of the lyrics from one of my favorite bands of all time – Bon Jovi:

“Until I’m six feet under baby I don’t need a bed, gonna live while I’m alive, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”