Florence, Italy - with the boys

Florence – one of my favorite cities in Italy!

We arrived early morning and started out by going into the Galleria dell’acedimica where the David by Michelangelo was. Luck for you, I snuck a picture of it! He was huge, I was not expecting to see this ginormous statue. It really was incredible. We walked around and saw a lot of other cool statues and paintings. Then we headed toward Piazza del Duomo.

The piazza was gorgeous. It had this unbelievable church – the Duomo or Catterdrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. Truly breathtaking.

We stopped and got pizza al taglio at a little place in the piazza. We swore we wouldn’t eat any more pizza but ended up walking out with 26 euros worth of delicious pizza! I got pizza with red and yellow peppers, David got tomoato and cheese pizza and sausage. Marty got cheese and prosciutto. All were equally delicious and we decided to skip dinner and just snack on our pounds and pounds of pizza throughout the day.

Next stop was Piazza Della Signoria. This is the piazza that the David used to be in. There are still millions of statues. It was almost overwhelling! There was a very cool fountain and so much to look at.

One of the buildings had flor-de-lis and keys on it… I guess Florence love KKG’s J

We hung out there for a bit then made our way to Ponte Vecchio. This is especially cool because there are homes on it! The bottom is filled with cute shops and the view is incredible. We walked along the river a bit and crossed over another bridge to get a good view of Ponte Vecchio from afar.

Ponte Vecchio

View from the bridge

We walked along Borgo San Jacopo and ran across Friends Pub that we wanted to check out later. Being only 3pm, it was still closed. We decided to go to Palazzo Pitti to relax a bit. It was so nice out that we laid in the sun (or at least I did) and got some shut eye since we got so much done that morning. We snacked on our pizza a bit and then walked around the area before heading to Friend’s Irish Pub.

Friend pub was so cool! We stopped in and were the only people there, but we found it necessary to go to an Irish pub in honor of bleated St. Patrick’s day. Since they weren’t serving drafts yet, Marty and I got Beck’s beer and David got a Pilsner. We had some potato chips and goofed around a bit as well, just enjoying ourselves while in Italy together.  MTV music videos were playing on the TV so we had some fun watching some crazy music videos too.

Before we left, the bartender gave us free hats! They were just simple black hats with an Italian beer label on the front. We took them just for shits and giggles.

We headed back to the train station but made a lot of stops on the way since we had a few hours to kill. We stopped at San Lorenzo market, which was HUGE! There were hundreds of vendors selling leather goods, purses, silk ties, shirts.. .you name it, they had it. Marty picked up a t-shirt and a nice silk tie. I got some goodies as well for some of my friends and family, I know they will love the surprise gifts!

There is so much art in Florence. There were markets all over the streets and we even saw some art being made in front of our eyes!

We headed to find some wine for the night. We stopped in a wine shop and a lady helped us pick out a great white drinking wine from the Tuscan region. She explained how you can’t get Tuscan wine that tastes this good unless you are in the region. The wine we got was Cesani Vernaccia di San Gimignano. After, we walked back towards the train station and stopped at Giardino Della Gherardesca which was a cute park near the train station. We hung out there and watched the locals on their evenings walks with their dogs. Literally everyone was walking their dog. It was mostly older men walking with a friend or two just chatting like old friends would. It was exactly what you’d expect for an afternoon in Italy. The sun started setting so we stated back to the station and hopped on a train in Verona.

That night we scrapped together some pasta from the night before and topped it off with pesto to have with our Tuscan wine. It was already getting late so we quickly packed for the next trip to Zurich before we headed to the hill to finish our wine.

We walked to the hill and stopped at Ponte Pietre to gaze at the river and look at the night scene of Verona. It was so peaceful and quiet. Then we made the trek up to the hill and sat on a bench at the top to finish our wine. It was a nice sweet dessert and a deliciously filling drink to end the long day. I was pretty restless to get some sleep, as were the boys, so we headed back to the apartment to get a few hours before we made our way to Switzerland bright and early the next morning. I almost got us lost on the way back… oops! But we figured it out and we were all sound asleep the minute we laid down.