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! 

Roma!

Rome was amazing. It was almost like being in Paris for me - that feeling that you've seen it in so many movies you think it can't possibly be that fantastic - and then it is! 

On our first day in town, we went to the center of the city and just started walking around. Our first stop was the Pantheon, originally built by the Romans but expanded and updated over the years. It was filled with tourists, but still so beautiful (and a little bit impossible to capture in a photo). Here's the dome with the hole at the top open to the outside air: 

It seems like something amazing lies around pretty much every corner in Rome. Just walking down the street, we were constantly running into old fountains, city walls, monuments, and churches that aren't on the tourist "must-see" lists, but are part of ordinary life for the Romans. For example, here's an old fountain and ivy-covered wall we ran into on the first afternoon: 

On that first day we wandered into so many churches that I can't even begin to remember all their names (plus we were going on only a few hours of sleep after a late night and early morning in Madrid, so that doesn't help). Each church was filled with amazing art, and I especially liked the golden Byzantine-style mosaics that we saw in some, where the pieces are so delicate it looks like paint (see the photo below on the left). We also made it into the Jewish part of the city (the Roman Ghetto), but since it was Friday many of the shops were closed for Sabbath. Below on the right is a building in the Jewish neighborhood with some Roman ruins in the background. 

Here is the synagogue; it's such a beautiful building, and a welcome sight to see after being in Spain, where all the Jewish and Muslim Spaniards were kicked out during the Inquisition (things are more diverse today, but there is definitely a big gap in their history because of this). We were sad that we couldn't go inside while in Rome this time, but we have to leave some things to do next time we visit! 

On our first night in Rome, we managed to eat not one, but two dinners. The first one we had some excellent pasta fatta in casa, fresh homemade pasta, with a few different sauces, including Roman classics like carbonara (in its original version there is no cream, just olive oil, eggs, a kind of bacon called guanciale, salt, pepper, and parmesan) and cacio e pepe (even simpler, with just olive oil, parmesan cheese, and pepper, but so delicious). It was so light and fresh and literally made us sigh out loud with joy (I swear, I'm not even exaggerating). That first plate of pasta in Italy was perfect! To be fair, we might have been a pretty easy crowd to please given that we made the mistake of waiting way too long before searching out food. After the morning of traveling from Madrid and afternoon of walking around Rome, we were starving by about 5pm and had to eat even though it is pretty early by Italian (and certainly Spanish) standards. So after Dinner #1, we ventured back out into the city to see Rome lit up at night!

At about 9pm we were ready for Dinner #2, at an upscale wine bar that had been recommended to us. When they handed us the menus, I was pretty surprised not to see any prices listed (other restaurants in the area had prices, and this place's menu outside even listed the prices). When I mentioned this to the boys, they had no idea what I was talking about. And that's when I realized, they gave me a menu without prices because I'm a woman! I had heard of this as something they used to do in fancy restaurants in the U.S. because they assume that a man is paying for the meal, but I honestly didn't think I would ever encounter it myself. I was especially surprised since I recently read a memoir by Ruth Reichl (former New York Times food critic) in which she talks about priceless menus for women being outdated (and offensive, frankly) back in the early 90s when she was reviewing restaurants in NY. Maybe they didn't get the memo in Italia though : ) At any rate, after sharing the regular menu with Will, we got a delicious Italian cheese plate, a mixed salad, and a pasta dish to share.

After dinner we started our walk back to our apartment rental via the Pantheon (that's the facade in the first photo) and Trevi Fountain.

After some gelato on the walk home (delicious all-natural honey gelato and grapefruit sorbetto!) we arrived at our apartment and pretty much passed out immediately. After some much needed rest, we were better prepared to take on Rome for day two of sightseeing! We started out with a visit to the Lateran Cathedral, near our apartment, known as the Pope's Cathedral for its prime importance in Rome (considered a separate diocese from the Vatican City, since the latter is actually an independent state). Here's the outside facade: 

We really liked the ceiling of this one; it seems to be fairly common throughout Italy for churches to have intricate flat ceilings instead of vaulted ones. Here's the inside of the cathedral:

After lunch we made our way over to the Coliseum. It was awesome to get to see the Coliseum up close, still standing after almost 2000 years; I still can't believe how old everything is in Rome. As we approached the entrance, the boys spontaneously posed for this photo (one of my favorites from the trip so far!): 

After walking around the inside of the Coliseum, we headed over to the Forum to check out some more Roman ruins. Again, I had no idea the scale of the monuments in Rome. The Forum is a huge area that feels more like a park with buildings, columns, and walls around every turn. Here is an old Roman theater: 

Here are some more photos we took on our walk through the Forum: 

You can tell in this next photo that we were getting a little overheated. That afternoon sun is brutal! Or, as Ben likes to say, "You can't beat that Mediterranean light!" 

Due to his part-Italian ancestry, Ben has spent a fair amount of time in Rome, and because of that he knows some secret spots around the city. After the hot trek through the Forum, he led us up to the cafe on the roof of the Campidoglio museum (on the Capitoline Hill, one of the seven hills of Rome and home to the citadel of the earliest Romans). From the cafe we enjoyed a beautiful view of Rome and some well-earned cold drinks!

Since it was our last full day in Rome, we decided to take a taxi over to the Vatican. We toured around St. Peter's Square before heading into the basilica itself. Here's me and Ben in front of the obelisk and basilica: 

Apparently the Catholic Church recently changed the rules about what visitors can wear inside the Basilica, having had enough of the tank top and shorts-wearing masses entering their holy place. You may wonder why such a policy was only put into place recently (maybe the Church had run out of other problems to solve?), but we were forewarned, and wore long pants (as you can see, knees and shoulders must be covered), despite the June heat. On our way inside they had a young man in a suit who looked like a Vegas bouncer, deciding who lived up to the dress code. Being a young Italian guy, he seemed pretty happy to get paid to scrutinize (mostly) women's clothes, although there seemed to still be a decent amount of subjectivity in who got past. Our favorite part of the sign is probably the "No Entry" male example, which looks like a Victorian bathing costume of some sort:

We also got to see the famous Swiss guards in their fancy outfits:

The inside of the basilica was beautiful. I can see why they don't leave pews out for visitors to sit in; they'd have tourists and pilgrims hanging out all day! 

On our walk back into Rome it was approaching sunset, and this couple was taking some wedding photos with the basilica as a backdrop. We stopped to watch the scene for a few minutes. The photographer in the foreground of the photo below was so entertaining! He was bossing the couple around, shouting commands in very fast Italian and standing back with his hip cocked to survey the scene. Such a primadonna!

A short walk from St. Peter's Square, we found ourselves in front of the Castel Sant'Angelo and a lovely view of the Tiber River and a bridge:

Just past the castle we ran into another couple taking wedding photos! This bride had a somewhat scandalous see-through lace corset that I actually think I saw on the terrible (but addictive) show "Say Yes to the Dress." Somehow this whole scene makes sense in Italy:

After some more walking along the river we eventually made it to a restaurant where we wanted to have dinner... only to find out that the restaurant is closed on Saturday evenings, of course. I guess it's not just Spain that has erratic opening hours! Luckily, there was this hip little bookshop/wine bar nearby where we popped in for a little rest before making the trek back into central Rome: 

After yet another excellent meal (I had cacio e pepe, and the boys shared Roman-style tripe, definitely an acquired taste, along with a pasta carbonara) we headed to the Spanish Steps for one last tourist stop in Rome. The steps were cool, but we were ready to get out of there after a few minutes. There were so many people everywhere!

Rome was a hoot, and for only having a couple days there, I feel like we really packed a lot in. I think it is definitely a place to come back to; there was so much there we didn't have time to see. On our last morning in Rome we went to the train station, and after storing our big bags there, we took off on a regional train down to Naples. 

Coming soon: here's a sneak peak from my upcoming post about Napoli! Pizza! Pompei! More pizza!