Tuscany Day 3: Florence, birthplace of the Renaissance

After our short stay in Bolzano, we drove three and half hours on to Sesto Fiorentino, which is right outside Florence.  We stayed at Villa Paradisino, an authentic 16th century family owned villa.  It was sweet.   

They had orange trees, lemon trees, a ton of olive trees, a big garden, fresh herbs, etc.  The highlight of the stay was the cooking class we took in the main home.  More on that later.

Sunday morning we attended an LDS church, it was only ten minutes from where we were staying, so that worked out great.  But, it only left us half a day in Florence.  And man, there is A LOT to see and do in Florence.  We didn't begin to cover it all, but I just have to be grateful for what we were able to see and do:

Piazza della Signoria:

Neptune's Fountain by Ammannati, created in 1565!!

Loggia dei Lanzi 

This is a REPLICA of David by Michelangelo… the real one is in the Accademia Gallery, which we didn't make it to.  Shameful, I know. At least this one was free to view and admire :)

We then went to the Uffizi Gallery, Florence's famous art gallery, which I kind of wish we hadn't bothered with.  I thought it was overpriced and they wouldn't even give us a map of the museum.  You had to pay 10 euro for a book that had a map insert in it.  I relied on my travel book to get an overview of the layout, but it turned out several of the rooms, like the Raphael room, were closed for maintenance and the paintings were relocated to different parts of the museum.  So, I was frustrated.  If I had to do it over, there are other attractions in Florence I would have rather seen, but didn't get a chance to.  

One of Michelangelo's few paintings.  He mostly did sculptures

The girls did amazingly well in the museum.  Don't they look like serious art critics?

Only Ben would take a picture of this priceless treasure

We continued making our way through the Florentine streets (narrow and packed!) and crossed the famous Ponte Vecchio.  It was jam packed with tourists, but I made Em pull over to snap a few shots.  She's always a good sport about it:

Then we hiked over to the Boboli Gardens.  Everyone was pretty spent at this point.  So, we just relaxed on the grass and were extremely humored by Caroline's crazy tales of "a little shrimp."  Really, the best moments of the trip were when we just took a break, enjoyed our surroundings, and hung out with each other.

Our sad "picnic" consisted of only a crust of bread.  I was lame on the snack front.  Afterwards we went out for a delicious dinner and yummy gelato, so all is well. 

Florentine skyline, not bad, eh?