Florence with Family

From Lucca, we made our way to Florence, where we met my mom, stepdad Mike, and little siblings Nick and Alyssa. WP and I got to Florence before the family and checked into our apartment rental. We had a beautiful 3-bedroom apartment right on the Arno River, overlooking the famous Ponte Vecchio (old bridge). Here's the view of the bridge from our living room, you can see the top of the Duomo (cathedral) over the buildings across the river: 

The apartment was very spacious (which was nice for our big group!), and decorated as if a little old Italian grandmother lived there, with really nice furniture and old paintings. My family had just traveled for a couple weeks in London and France, so it was nice for them to be in an apartment instead of a hotel, with access to a kitchen, laundry, living room, etc. 

Our apartment was just a short walk from the main piazza with the Duomo and bell tower, and on our first day exploring we walked through the square and went inside the cathedral. Here's a photo of the outside of the church; the whole structure is so massive it is a little hard to capture the tower, dome, and front facade, but you can see the dome peaking out between the church and tower: 

After eating a fantastic lunch of Abruzzo-style pasta at the Ristorante della Accademia (a recommendation from our friends Jim and Deb; thanks again!) we had to stop for a photo at this place next door, the Twins' Caffe. Twins in front of Twins', awww so cute:  

From lunch we headed over to the Accademia museum to see Michaelangelo's  famous statue of David. I think we were all very happy to have had made reservations to get into the museum. We only had to wait about 10 minutes in the reservations line. The people waiting in the non-reservations line looked like they'd been there for a while, standing in the hot sun in humid, 100-degree weather, ugh. 

Once inside, we got to see a pretty cool special exhibition of musical instruments that included some types of clarinets, harps and pianos I'd never seen before. Afterwards we went into the main sculpture hall to see the man himself. It was actually pretty impressive to see David up close; it is a lot more detailed than the duplicate one that they display in the square near the Ponte Vecchio where the statue used to be placed. I snapped a quick clandestine photo of the statue (hey, we came this far, we deserve to have a no-flash photo, right?) and of the Pink David statue in the courtyard of the museum made by a contemporary artist: 

After the Accademia, we walked back through the Duomo square to a really good gelateria and sorbetteria, Grom. I think between all of us we tried the lemon, raspberry, dark chocolate, coffee, cantaloupe, and chocolate chip, all of which were amazing (there was another branch of Grom in Venice, and there may be others; keep an eye out if you're in Italy!). With our gelato in hand, the sweltering walk back to our apartment wasn't so bad, but still, none of us were complaining when we got inside to our air-conditioned haven. Here we are on the Ponte Vecchio: almost home! 

The next day, we had another appointment in the morning to get into the Uffizi Gallery, which is home to a gigantic collection of paintings and sculpture ranging from Greek and Roman sculpture all the way up to paintings from the 18th century. I tend to prefer more recent art, but I was surprised by how cool a lot of the triptychs from the 13th and 14th century were. There were a lot of pieces that were done almost like an ancient Mod Podge (you crafters or former OMers know what I mean). They boiled animal parts (usually goat skin) to make a glue-like substance that they then used to paste down gold leaf to highlight the halos of saints, Jesus, and Mary. The pieces we saw were very brightly colored and looked almost like scenes from a biblical comic book, depicting different memorable episodes from Bible history and saints' lives. The other big hits among our group were Boticelli's Venus (the one where Venus is riding in on a clam-shell) and Primavera, as well as Caravaggio's painted shield with the head of Medusa. From inside the Uffizi we had an excellent view of the Ponte Vecchio and surrounding area. Just beautiful! 

Later that day we visited the Basilica of Santa Croce that had some pretty strict rules about what we could wear inside. Luckily, my mom is pretty handy with Kleenex and made me some little cap sleeves to cover my shoulders, and they had a machine where you could buy a robe for 50 cents that Alyssa bought. Only Alyssa could make this robe look so cute! Here's a little sibling reject photo for your viewing pleasure: 

The inside of the church was incredible, and houses the graves of a lot of famous Italians like Galileo, Macchiavelli, and Dante. Each grave is decorated pretty elaborately with carvings and statues that relate to their studies, profession, or personality. Here's Galileo's grave, with lots of scientific instruments and maps: 

The ceiling of the church was also pretty awesome; check it out: 

We also got to go back into the cloisters of this church, where I'm not embarrassed to say we ran through the sprinklers to cool down a bit. I'm pretty sure God (or the gardener?) had those sprinklers on at that moment just for us. Either way, Amen! Later, when we rejoined the civilized people, we decided we should have at least one photo of all of us together, in front of this beautiful chapel that reminded us of the geometrically ideal design at the Alhambra in Granada: 

On our last full day in Florence, Mike, Will, and the kids took a hike up a big hill to a church, while my mom and I went pottery shopping, because that's how we roll. I won't go into too much detail about the pottery, but basically, it is all beautiful, and it took us a long time to choose which patterns we wanted for our new oil and vinegar holders. Will took the camera up with him on the hike and got some incredible photos of the cityscape, where you can see the Duomo, the bell tower, and the surrounding buildings:  

While they were up there they also went to visit the San Miniato church that had a very detailed facade and incredible interior dating back to the 13th century. 

They were all especially enthusiastic about the special reddish marble that was used behind the altar and cross in the front of the church. The way the light was shining through from behind made it look almost like lava:

That afternoon we reunited and all made the trek to the Pitti Palace, a huge palace complex from the Renaissance that includes a few different museums, tour of the apartment chambers, and a garden. Here's the view out the window of a museum looking toward the gardens: 

For our dinner we (mostly Mike, to be fair) made some pasta at home with fresh spaghetti, tomatoes, basil and parmesan cheese. So tasty! 

Our time in Florence was so fun, and we were happy to get to be there with my family. Our apartment was amazing, the food was fabulous, and the sights were one of a kind. I definitely hope to visit Firenze again someday! From Florence we took the train up to Venice... more soon about our hot and humid three days by the canals!