So today the heat broke us. We were awake and checking out of our Milan hotel by 8am and caught our 2 hour train to Florence. It was a lovely train journey as the train was so spacious and we even had a little electric button on the table to control the blind which was cool.

Arriving in Florence was instantly mental. The train station was so busy and it was overwhelming. We had a last minute change of apartment in Florence due to some complications and so we had to find an apartment last minute. Finding another apartment within our budget meant we weren't able to get one with as central a location (and Florence doesn't have metro).

There is a new hell in crossing Florence at noon with 39 degree temperatures, millions of tourists, 45kg of luggage which won't even roll properly because of the f***ing cobblestones. When we arrived at the apartment my face was so red that Adam thought I'd got serious sunburn and Adam was so soaked in sweat even his trainers were wet. It took 40 minutes to do the journey and we didn't even speak to one another the whole time, I think the heat was making us so irritable we knew it was best.

We arrived at the apartment and met the lady for the exchange of keys. She was very nice and had bought us some postcards and a little wooden duomo as a gift. The apartment is really nice. You walk into a large hallway with a fitted wardrobe to the left and mirrors to the right. Ahead of you is the door to the kitchen which is modern and has a little breakfast table. On the right is the door to the living area. The living area is really big. It has a little lounge area where there is a TV and a sofa and then there is an area with a desk and bookcases. The whole area is floor to ceiling covered in paintings.

There are stairs up to the mezzanine balcony which is where the bedroom is. Above the bed is a skylight which is nice and we have a remote control to open it. Off the bedroom is a big bathroom with a large shower and a laundry section as well with the washing machine. Off the bathroom is our roof terrace :)

Adam sat in the air conditioned living area whilst I had the quickest of showers so we would feel refreshed enough to head back out. I thought maybe the heat would be more manageable without our luggage...it wasn't.

I thought if we walked into town alongside the river it might be cooler however on Saturday night there was a tornado in Florence and by the river was hit quite hard. There were fallen trees everywhere and roof tiles and rubbish everywhere so actually it was quite hard to walk.

We arrived at our lunch destination, a mozzarella bar, once again hot and sweaty. I loved my lunch, I had a large glass of white wine with some smoked mozzarella, Parma ham and fried pizza dough. Adam wasn't too keen, he had a mozzarella pizza but the cheese was so fresh there was brine on the plate and Adam didn't like it.

We then walked to the duomo. We had prebooked tickets online for the duomo, the campanile and the baptistery. Everywhere else we've prebooked online it's meant we've skipped the line and joined a queue just for ticket holders however when we asked the staff at the duomo they said ticket holders queue with everyone else.

This may not have been a problem except the queue for the duomo was 90 minutes long, outside in 38 degree heat and no shade. There's no where on earth I want to see that much so we decided to move on to the bell tower. Again the queue for that was an hour so we skipped that too. The baptistery strangely had not a single person outside and we walked straight in. It had a lovely gold ceiling and it was beautiful but overall for our day sightseeing in Florence we felt we didn't really get our money's worth.

We returned to the apartment (well we got lost on the way back) googled the nearest supermarket which was a mile down the road and set off to get the ingredients for dinner. We were so exhausted by the day we couldn't even contemplate going out for dinner. I put up a photo of our little shopping spree because there's just no way I'm putting up a picture of our faces after today! I got 2 litres of white wine for 2 euros, classy girl!

Now I'm sitting writing this on our roof terrace sipping previously mentioned plonk as Adam cooks us a pasta meal with all kinds of meat and veg and suddenly the day is starting to look up :)