European Adventure: Florence

Next we visited the lovely city of Florence

On the Ponte Vecchio bridge

We were in town during the Calcio Fiorentino, which is an old form of soccer played on sand with almost no rules about physical contact. I was sorely tempted to buy tickets, but we had lots of other things to see, so I decided against it. Luckily though, the day before we wandered by the Santa Croce church and were able to watch part of a demonstration game that was going on.

The doors of the Baptistry, aka the birth of the Renaissance.

This video isn't great, but you can hear the amazing bells of the Duomo.

The Duomo (and Baptistry). It was incredible.

Outside the Uffizi gallery were a group of sculptures on a large covered porch. I figured they were replicas at first, but no, they were originals. They were wonderful, and we stopped and looked at them multiple times while we were in Florence.

On Mondays all the museums in Florence close, so we rented a car and explored the Tuscan countryside.

It was so, so beautiful.

Can I just say though, that if you are ever driving in Italy, do not attempt to do so without a GPS. I am SO glad we purchased an international data plan so we could use google maps, because the directions I printed out so carefully were perfectly useless as there were no street signs anywhere. Well, there were a couple, but seriously, it was ridiculous.

We stopped in two medieval towns. First up was Volterra.

We ate lunch there and then just wandered around for awhile. We came across this park and saw this amazing looking fortress in the distance. "Let's go take a tour!" I suggested, because of course they would offer a tour right?

Um, not if said fortress happens to have been turned into a state penitentiary. We had a good laugh at ourselves over that one.

We hopped back in the car and enjoyed some more beautiful scenery

Then we spotted our next destination, San Gimignano.

This town was cool, but a little more Disneyland-like. 

A storm was moving in, but I got a quick shot of the last rays of sunlight...

...and then the heavens opened and it poured rain. I love a good summer thunderstorm, and we took cover under this archway (along with about 30 other tourists) for a good 20 minutes before we decided the rain wasn't going to let up anytime soon, and we may as well make a run for it. We had planned on buying a selection of local meats and cheeses and picnicking for lunch. So we dashed from store to store, picking up cheese here, several kinds of prosciutto there, crackers here, and then drinks somewhere else. Finally we sprinted to our car.

And arrived very, very wet.

We drove a little out of the city (since we were paying for parking by the hour), and pulled over to picnic in the car. As we finished the rain finally stopped and we got to enjoy a nice rainbow all along our drive back to Florence. So while the day didn't turn out quite as we'd planned, it was still quite pleasant, and I really enjoyed having a more relaxed day.

The next day we packed in the museums, hitting the Galleria dell'Accademia first to see Michelangelo's David
#78 See Michelangelo's David and the Sistine Chapel

It. Was. Amazing. And considering we knew exactly what it would look like, and had even seen some full-size reproductions around the city, we were shocked to find that it still exceeded our expectations. Michelangelo's prisoners are also there, and were very cool to see. Do me a favor and put that museum on your list, if it isn't already.

Next we hurried over to the Uffizi Gallery where we saw a bazillion famous paintings and I officially hit museum fatigue. You know you're done when you realize there's another gallery and all you can do is groan inwardly as you start shuffling down the hallway. But we had to squeeze it in because our train to Switzerland left that afternoon.

Other notes from Florence:

• Best gelato ever at a place called Vivoli. So sad that we only discovered it on our last day there.
• We went to church at a ward there, and enjoyed getting outside the city center. We had a fun conversation with a member there who was originally from Peru. She spoke Spanish, Italian, and a few words of English. Chase speaks Portuguese, I know very limited Italian, and between speaking all of those languages to each other and gesticulating a lot, we managed to communicate! It was kind of amazing, really. I didn't understand a word of Sacrament meeting, but it was fun to sing the hymns in Italian.
• We stayed in a convent just a few minutes walk from the Duomo. The location and price were just right, but yes, it was a bit weird staying in a convent. Our room was more "old college dorm" than anything else, and the nuns were very nice but literally didn't speak one word of English (not even basic greetings) so there was a lot of smiling and nodding while they spoke to us in strings of both Italian and French (at least I could understand some of the French!), and we never did find the complimentary breakfast. 
• There were a whole bunch of fireworks one night while we were there. Fireworks echo a LOT in an old city made mostly of stone. I honestly thought the first one was a bomb.
• A lot of our room keys while in Europe were these large old fashioned keys. 
  
  I kind of loved it.