Is Florence the BEST city in Italy? | It was so much more than we expected...

So granted, we've only been to four Italian cities, but this one was far and away our favorite. The scenery and architecture were beautiful; the food and wine were delicious; the atmosphere was surprisingly laid back; the weather was perfect; there were impressive sculptures placed all throughout the city... And of course, Florence has THE MOST spectacular sculpture of all: Michelangelo's David.
We don't know what others think of this place, but if you're planning a trip to Italy and Florence isn't on your list, we can't recommend it enough.
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[@deckard1970]

The David it is indeed a Masterpiece but I believe the most astonishing Michelangelo's sculpture remain the Pietà in Saint Peter Cathedral. The 1st time I saw it I remained literally in shock, it's not only at the same time beautiful and moving, it is something more. Plus it was sculptured when Michelangelo was only 24 yo... 😶

[@JkayIsTrying]

Without a doubt my favourite city in the world! Built on romance and art - stunning!

[@Peterraymond67]

Love your video. You are having a great trip. In 1998 the company I worked for was British Telecom. They were looking for technicians to work in the new exchanges they had around Italy for 6 months. I got to go and after a week in Rome I was posted to Florence. I was working on the third floor of a lovely building on the road between the Duomo and the square where the statue of David used to be. Out for lunch in great café’s just off the main street, they were cheaper. It was late spring and very busy. The only hotel they could find for me was in Montecatini Terme an hour away by train.I enjoyed Florence. Montecatini was a great place in the evenings, lovely restaurants and bars, my hotel was just off the main plaza. Sunday evenings families would walk around the square. Some weekends I would go to Lucca, not a big place but a walled city where the wall is a huge embankment surrounding the town, tunnels to let traffic in with the wall so big it had a walkway and cycle path on top.

[@davidrobertson6501]

The Duomo in Florence is one of the most beautiful in Italy. The Medici's built a corridor that allowed them to walk from the town hall, through the Uffizi to the Pitti Palace over the Arno. This helped them avoid the crowded streets and possible assassination attempts.

[@user-wy7wj9yp5b]

Il David è uno spettacolo ❤❤❤

[@ashleydavis6809]

What a gorgeous view of the city❤❤

[@alessandrom7181]

Thanks for your respect and for not having used the usual South Italian mandolins or Tarantella music for Florence as many tourists do in their videos. I find it highly disrespectful and very stereotypying of an entire country who is not exactly the same from Alps to Lampedusa. Nothing against South Italy by my side, but respecting a culture means also that you inform yourself on customs and traditions before to go as you did most probably. So thanks again and cheers.

[@ugnano5a14]

e come se un turista italiano usasse la musica "country" per la 5 strada a new york. o nel centro di boston

[@36flamingo63]

You are too... gentle. There are 2 Italys

[@keithflowers5229]

Well you have sold Florence to me! Wonderful show case. Brilliant vlog ❤

[@qlctravels]

Thanks, Keith! 😊

[@RadioJammor]

Great view. Reminds me a little of how you viewed Edinburgh from Calton Hill. I don't recall if anyone pointed it out, but you can get up Arthur's Seat fairly easily from the north or east for an even better view of Edinburgh and beyond, but it would have taken a couple of hours out of your day to get there and appreciate the view and come down again.

[@qlctravels]

We sadly found that out too late. But the good news is, we WILL be returning to Edinburgh one day, so Arthur's Seat can't elude us forever! 😄

[@gianlucavisca3419]

Yes certainly the best and the most beautiful...one of the most beautiful in the world.. Florentia La Magnifica.!!😀😀👍👍 A Powerhouse of Commerce, the Cradle of the Renaissance, Bithplace of the Italian Language and birth place for many of the most important Artists, Architects and Lettereds in the history of the Western Civilization.... TOSCANA FELIX 1

[@everythingandthekitchensink]

Florence was one of my favourite places in Italy! Been twice now and would definitely go back again! Glad you like it! Shame your video trip is coming to an end soon.. final month! Wonder if you are planning another trip soon??

[@qlctravels]

We can neither confirm nor deny... 😊

[@VickiMcCormick-jf5pe]

I have a question for you kids. So now that you have seen all these places, probably not as in detail as you would have liked. My question is if you get a chance to do this again. Would you do it the same way, or would you pick a couple of places and stay a bit longer? This would include like maybe see a whole different places, say like Ireland or just wherever. Or would you pick some places that you have already seen, or new places for more time in each. I guess what I'm looking for is do you prefer to see more places like you did? Or more time in less places. I think you two are adorable. If you don't mind a little unsolicited advice. Always remember to never make each other feel less and at the end of the day to remember to make each other feel important and loved. With that as your foundation you can build on it forever. I hope you two stay with this KZbin, it might be hard and frustrating that it isn't going as fast as you like. Just keep in mind that every single you tuber has started out the same way. You'll get there, just takes time and patience.

[@qlctravels]

(Apologies for this very long response.) It's a good question, and a tricky one to answer, because honestly, we love the trip we did and don't have too many regrets about it. It's easy to look at the number of cities we moved through and wonder if doing less would have been better, but with the exception of two cities near the start, we never felt like we had too little time in any city. Those two exceptions are Liverpool and Belfast, which were the places that actually made us realize we needed to alter our route and cut some places out down the line. Once we reached Portugal, we fell into a good rhythm of ALWAYS having at least 2 full days in every city we visited, and anywhere from 3-5 in bigger cities like Paris, Berlin, Rome, etc. We realize 2 days isn't enough time to see all a city has to offer -- but then, neither is a full week, or even two in a lot of cases. There will always be more to see, but this trip was always about getting a taste of the different countries and cultures throughout Europe, rather than hitting a handful of major cities and squeezing the most out of them. It was a deliberate choice to go to as many places as possible, because from the start of planning the trip, our philosophy was "We'll never get to travel like this again, so this is our one opportunity to see most of these cities/countries." Sure, we might have seen more in cities like Florence or Lisbon if we had cut out places like Bern or Munich or Bruges. And it would have been less exhausting, that's for sure. But at the same time, NOT cutting those places out means we can now look back and say things like, "We've stood in the Marienplatz in Munich and watched the Glockenspiel." "We've climbed all 366 steps of the Belfry in Bruges and overlooked that beautiful city." "We've sat atop Gurten and spent a sunny afternoon staring out at the Swiss Alps." "We've descended the spiral staircase of the Initiation Well in Sintra." Every new place was filled with experiences we could ONLY get by traveling there, and while we would of course have loved to see more of the cities we adored and stay longer, we had the mindset of "We can always go back to places like Edinburgh or Paris if/when we have the means, but when are we ever going to be in a place like Bordeaux, or Hamburg, or Luxembourg?" Those are cities we would have never considered traveling to for a one-off holiday (especially given the cost and time required to fly between the U.S. and Europe), but this trip allowed us to see and experience them, and now we have unique memories we can't imagine living without. At the end of the day, there are definitely pros and cons to the way we did things. It wasn't the most relaxing way to travel, but we were determined to experience as much as possible, and we wanted to do the journey by trains and buses because we wanted to see the landscapes change and really FEEL the distance. The idea of hopping on planes between major cities wasn't exciting to us; we wanted context for the cities we were in, to see the the spaces around and between them. We wanted to see how Spain turns into France, how Germany becomes Switzerland. But that said, we definitely DID have to adjust things at the start. Planning the trip beforehand, there was no way to know how we would feel once we were on it. So thanks to Liverpool and Belfast, places like Toulouse, and Dresden, and Brussels (to name a few) were dropped. It was a delicate balance, but two full days felt right to us in most cities: one day spent seeing all the biggest, "must-see" sights, another day going at a slower pace and just seeing what we discovered. Thank you for the kind words, by the way. We definitely intend to continue making videos, and we're not overly concerned with the rate of growth. Truth be told, the attention these videos have been getting is more than we ever expected when we started the channel. It was more about documenting the trip and showing people back in the U.S. what Europe is like -- but as it happens, the majority of our audience seems to be people who live in these cities we've traveled to and want to see what two Americans think of them. Once the vlogs are finished, we'll have to see what comes next. But if the past 8-9 months have shown us anything, it's that we want to find ways to continue traveling, and we want to continue sharing our adventures with everyone who's interested.

[@pile333]

Thanks for visiting and for enjoying it. 🥂

[@qlctravels]

🥂

[@RollerbazAndCoasterDad]

A lovely Davideo.

[@qlctravels]

Now you're just showing off 🤣

[@RollerbazAndCoasterDad]

​@@qlctravelsAnother city I know very well, but only through Project Gotham Racing.

[@nikiseminara4345]

Venus in Paris? Ma dai!! Il La Gioconda or Monna Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. Please!!!!

[@jsmith1071]

Lovely video of Florence. Was there a reason you travelled in winter?

[@qlctravels]

Lauryn was on a contract at the place we previously worked, which ended in mid-October. The only way we could do a trip like this was to go when we had no major commitments of any kind, but naturally we also couldn't sustain being unemployed and without a place to live for too long, so we traveled from November 1st - February 1st and then moved to Colorado to establish a new life. (Basically, our window of opportunity just happened to fall in the winter months, and we decided we didn't want to let that stop us from doing a once-in-a-lifetime trip.)

[@jsmith1071]

@@qlctravels Makes sense.

[@phoenix-xu9xj]

What do Americans have after dinner then? Even here in the UK with followed it up with tea or coffee

[@qlctravels]

Coffee with dessert isn't too uncommon in the U.S., but also isn't the norm; some restaurants may offer it after a meal, but typically the expectation is just dessert. Evening coffee drinking was far more prevalent with the older generations here (which makes sense, given how many of our great-grandparents and beyond were immigrants, bringing their customs with them), and there may also be a regional component to it as well -- though it's probably safe to assume drinking coffee in the evenings is, on the whole, not typical for the vast majority of Americans, no matter which state they're from.

[@cerliezio]

Cappuccino after dinner?

[@qlctravels]

Some commenters have pointed out the correct thing would be simply coffee or espresso, not cappuccino after dinner.

[@robertoprincipe5749]

Hi from Italy. Please, cappuccino ONLY for breakfast! After meals expresso or simple coffe!

[@qlctravels]

Thanks! We'll keep that in mind for (hopefully) a future return to Italy.

[@alexlizannabelbarrett4895]

Whoooa there!! Never have coffee with milk (or cappuccino) after midday in Italy!! Assume in Florence they are used to tourists asking, other places you'd be a complete laughing stock!!

[@alessandrom7181]

To be honest i'm Italian and i always used to have a snack in the afternoon with cappuccino and a brioche, especially in winter when cold. The laughing stock are mostly the people who go to restaurants and ask cappuccino with a meal or pasta. Now those are the laughing stock for real.

[@qlctravels]

Ah okay! Good to know!

[@TransientFantasy]

No

[@andrearegis1356]

For me the best cities in Italy are: Turin, Verona, Bologna, Rome, Naples ...and, off course Florence. I don' like Milan.