Texts and Photo Essay By Logan Hillen
One wouldn’t think to get up before the sunrises, but it is an experience that no tour guide can show you in the middle of the day. At 5am the streets are bare and free of any crowds, street vendors, or locals. All there are is you, and the street cleaners. This leaves a person free to enjoy every inch of the sights around them, uninterrupted and worry free. To see the Duomo, usually flocked by hundreds of people, completely empty is an overwhelming image and going at 5am gives you the opportunity to walk around it and take in the sight from bottom to top in its entirety. You can admire it in complete and utter peace.
Then after you have finally taken in the beautiful sight, you can head to a pedestrian-free Ponte Vecchio. Here, around 6am now, you have an entire bridge to yourself to scan the horizon uninterrupted from both sides of the bridge. If you face East, you can see the sky painted with a rising sun and the beautiful colors that follow. Getting up and taking a walk around the city before it wakes up is one of the best ways to explore Florence.
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