Tag: Florence

Today is going to be a combo post. The internet at our apartment in Florence was pretty weak and uploading pictures was a struggle, so a combo will help to catch up. Also, Sunday was a travel day, so it was already pretty slow, unless anyone is interested in hearing me go into a plot analysis of The Lego Movie or Peppa Pig. I would enjoy doing that, but for the sake of this post, I’ll spare everyone.

Saturday was a welcomed refreshing arrival after the work week. We’d seen most of the Florence sights you could see walking around, so we thought we might try a museum. There are a ton of museums to visit in Florence, but the key would be finding one conducive for the boys. We did some quick research and landed on the Interactive Da Vinci Museum.

We wound our way through the city, which is still baffling how much it is like walking through a museum in and of itself, and found ourselves at the little museum. The museum was designed with kids in mind and contained working models of many of Da Vinci’s inventions and machines that he illustrated and designed in his notebooks. The room was filled with full-sized machines of all sorts, some of them famous designs, some less well known. All around us were gears and levers clanking and cranking. There were weapons for war, mechanisms for flight, and tools for industry, most way ahead of their time. It was really cool for both the boys, and for us, to turn the wheels and crank the levers to see how it all worked. It is amazing that a single person designed all of these things, when any single particular one was revolutionary at the time. It is also amazing how detailed and precise his drawings were in the codexes he drew them in.

There were some other small exhibits about his art and about his work on anatomy. I read a Da Vinci biography a year or two ago and something that I read then and was reminded of at the museum was how he was self taught through observation and that he wasn’t confined by convention. In fact, he could write ambidextrously since he was naturally left handed, but forced to learn right handed as well. Because of this, and it’s thought for secrecy’s sake, he would start at the “back” of his notebooks and write right to left, often in mirror script. Just crazy!

The museum was really a great stop where we had fun and the boys learned a lot. We were hungry at that point and, since we were in the area, we went back to the Mercato Centrale for some more dumplings, spring rolls, pizza, and, this time a new addition, sheep milk cannolis which. Everything was delectable. Who’s have thought the best Chinese steamed dumplings and spring rolls I’ve ever had would be in Florence, Italy. The cannolis were just meh, but Silas liked them.

After lunch we made the long walk back for nap. I was still feeling good and, since Allison went out during lunch the day prior, she was kind enough to let me go out to see something I desired to. That thing was The Uffizi Gallery. Being in Florence, the Uffizi is known for being one of the greatest collections of Renaissance art in the world and was in the line-of-sight from our apartment.

The building originally was offices (that’s where the name Uffizi comes from) built by the Medici’s, I think. Since it wasn’t originally built for this purpose, getting in is like a maze through all these different rooms, then down a couple staircases, only to go up a bunch more. Finally, you are spit out into a long gallery that stretches two city blocks lined with ancient Roman statues of gods, emperors, and other significant figures. The ceilings are covered in painted panels of different Renaissance scenes. Off of the main hallway, you are led to start winding through different gallery rooms with paintings grouped by Renaissance masters. There is work by Botticelli, Raphael, Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Titian, Michelangelo, all the heavy hitters, and some of the most famous works of the Renaissance.

It was refreshing to walk through the galleries taking in the masterful colors and forms. Whenever I’m in this type of place, I feel like I could come and look at one painting for the entire afternoon rather than take in the whole gallery, but I’ll take what I can get! I saw some beautiful works that I’ve seen in books and on TV. Seeing the detail in person is astounding and, in many cases, they are painted in a way where they almost jump off the canvas.

I got back to the apartment right as the boys woke from their nap. We had been going pretty hard, but we were able to muster enough energy for a gelato run and a run to the store for a makeshift charcuterie board. After we ate, we felt a night in would be best and we enjoyed watching the Pixar movie Luca together. It was such a great evening snuggling up on the couch.

In the morning we packed up and cleaned the apartment. It is always quite a miraculous sight to see the apartment go from what looks like ground zero of a minor tornado to looking like we’d never been there.

We tromped the kilometer to the train station to catch our train. It was delayed, but that was ok. We just chilled at a McDonalds in the train station.

We got back to Rome in the late afternoon, the boys took a nap and we mostly continued to recuperate for the evening. There was a short jaunt to the playground and to gelato. I think the boys were glad to be back. The whole time in Florence, we were in a pretty touristy area, which is different from our Rome digs. Silas asked to go to a playground the whole time we were there and we couldn’t provide anything other than a large, busy piazza with pigeons to corral.

I think we were glad to be back too. Florence was beautiful and fun, but we both feel we spent the perfect amount of time there for this trip. I loved the history of the area and walking the winding streets of Renaissance architecture. I didn’t love the touristy crowds and feeling like I was constantly being ripped off. That may not have been Florence’s fault and may just be a function of how much I’ve come to enjoy the neighborhood of our apartment in Rome.

Hello, it’s Allison. I thought I would join in the fun and write a post of my own!

Day 12 brought continued explorations of Florence. It was Mike’s turn to wake up with the boys, and I was able to sleep in until about 8:30am when we needed to make an urgent trip to the store for some diapers. The boys enjoyed some fruit and yogurt at home, and then enjoyed some pastries when we ventured out for morning cappuccinos. (Beren and Silas have had voracious appetites, and every day eat more than the last!)

After enjoying a leisurely morning, we walked to the Cathedral Santa Maria to see if we would have more luck getting in this time. We waited in a long, steadily-moving line, and watched Silas run back and forth along the crowd as we slowly inched toward the cathedral. The outside of the cathedral is breathtaking, and the inside was not to be overshadowed. The enormous and ornate interior was awesome, and even the boys lowered their voices in instinctive reverence. The marble floors were decorated in intricate patterns, and inside the globe was one of the most amazing murals we have ever seen. We stood admiring the paintings until our necks got sore, and then moved on to our next activity – lunch!

A few blocks away was an indoor market, Mercato Centrale Firenze. The first floor hosts stands of produce, butcher shops, and other food stalls. The second floor is a food hall with different restaurants. We split up and ordered a variety of food including, pizza, truffle risotto, and some of the best spring rolls and dumplings I have ever had! We all enjoyed ourselves, and the boys played under and around the table between bites. We were all sitting together on the same side of the table at one point, and the boys were smiling and laughing with each other. The market’s photographer stopped by to ask if she could take a picture of us, since we looked like a happy family enjoying the food and each other. We said yes, but the interruption caused us to suddenly fall silent. The boys immediately stopped playing and laughing, and sat there as if they had been turned into sad little statues. After hanging around for a few seconds, the photographer said “oh well” and walked away.

After lunch, we walked back to the airbnb for naptime. The boys tried to pretend they weren’t tired, but promptly fell asleep after a few lullabies. Mike went to work at the little desk in our room, and I walked across the piazza to the palace museum.

Palazzo Vecchio was originally built in the 1200’s, but had been added to over time as different inhabitants moved in and out. The entrance is lined with some incredible and old statues, including a replica of Michelangelo’s Statue of David. The Statue of David has been covered by a large black sheet in mourning and support of Ukraine. Once inside, I bought a ticket to view the apartments of Cosimo I. They were incredible! The first floor included rooms for each person living there at the time. The ceilings were ornately adorned with murals that depicted scenes from that person’s life. The floor above mirrored the rooms on the first floor, but were themed around different gods that corresponded with the person’s room below. There was also an entire wing devoted to Eleonora of Toledo, which was themed after different divine or inspirational women. I spent almost two hours walking through the palace, and could have spent more, but had to get back before the boys got up from their nap.

Our afternoon consisted of another carousel ride and gelato. It was a lot of fun! Then, we met up with Mike for an early dinner (well, early by Italian standards. It was 5:30pm). We enjoyed a relaxed and happy afternoon together until the boys crashed again around 8pm.

After the boys went to sleep, I noticed strange sounds outside. I thought it might be singing (we heard a group singing the previous night), so I went to the window to investigate. To my surprise, I saw at least six police cars, surrounding the entrance to the palace, and officers slowly encircling a man that stood on the steps. The covering that was previously over the Statue of David was removed. I soon noticed that it was laying on the ground, on fire. It had mostly been stamped out, but a few officers were still working to put out the flames when a fire truck arrived to finish the job. They quickly had the man (who I now presumed to be a Russian sympathizer) handcuffed and zipped away in a police car.

It was a pretty crazy occurrence to witness, especially in a place with so much history. This piazza existed before the United States existed – before the American continents were even discovered by this part of the world! Centuries of royalty lived here. Artists such as Michelangelo created masterpieces in this very place. A few feet from the spectacle we witnessed, the preacher Girolamo Savonarola was hanged and burned for his radical preaching in 1498. It’s crazy that this place has served as a place of importance for so many hundreds of years, and continues to do so.

Anyway, after the hubbub died down, I left the sleeping kids and working Mike to go to a café on my own. I ended up in a cool little Hookah Bar, and ate dessert and wrote in my notebook about some observations I’ve made while being in Italy. Maybe that will be a blog post of its own at some point! As I got up to pay and leave, the bar tender invited me back the following night for drinks with him. I left it a maybe, because I love the drama.

Thanks for having me as your guest writer for the day! I hope to be invited back soon. 🙂

A new day and everyone is in a better mood. Today’s plan was to use the morning to walk around and explore the city. We got dressed, ready, and out the door. Initially our plan was to go in a counter clockwise loop through all of the main Piazzas in the city center and end the walk along the Arno River.

We started out and grabbed some pastries and cappuccinos at a local bakery before making our way to Piazza della Republica to sit and eat them while we people watched a bit. There’s an old fashioned carousel in the piazza, but it wasn’t open yet so we promised the boys we’d come back later. Then we went to the piazza with the Cathedral Santa Maria di Fiore, which is the super famous cathedral with the red dome that is quintessential in any photograph of Florence. You turn the corner out of a little alley and there it is looming over you. The cathedral is massive and incredibly beautiful with ornately carved walls, statues and doors. It is also built out of pink, green, and white stone which are patterned in intricate detail throughout the building. My favorite part was, when we entered the square, Allison and I were overcome by the scale and grandeur, but when I looked down at Beren, he pointed ahead and exclaimed, “Look a horse!”, almost as if he was oblivious to what was behind the horse. When we got a picture, he wanted to make sure the horse was in it.

We wanted to go in, but we were a little too on the ball this morning and it hadn’t opened yet. Rather than waiting for 30 mins, we decided to move on and return another time. From there we made our way to the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, which is home to another large Cathedral. Here there was some outdoor space and the boys were able to have a bit of freedom which they used to corral a bunch of pigeons into one particular grass area as if they were shepherds and the nasty birds were their sheep. The line for the cathedral was long and you had to buy tickets to see it (lame), so we continued on for now.

Before coming to Florence I did some research on weird or off the beaten path things to see in each of the cities we were visiting using the website Atlas Obscura. If you’ve never used this website, it’s for exactly this purpose. I had found on Atlas Obscura that one of, or possibly, the oldest actively operating pharmacy/perfumery in the world was near this piazza. We sought it out and, from the outside it was a little unassuming, but what was on the inside was amazing and totally unexpected.

You enter the Officina Profumo – Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella through a hallway that’s hanging with flowers and with statues on either side. Down the hallway there is a room covered with frescoes from the 12th century and then it opens up into the main shop with vaulted ceilings, art lined walls, and wooden display cases with various vials of colored liquids. It felt super fancy and smelled fresh and amazing. We began looking around the various rooms of the store, each one decorated differently with old art and pharmacy relics on the walls. We ended up talking with one of the workers who was extremely kind and helpful and she took us through, and allowed us to sample, many of the products, some of which still use the same recipes as when the shop first opened in the year 1221. 1221! Are you kidding me?! I like to imagine Dante working on the Divine Comedy before dabbing himself with the same fragrance of cologne I purchased today and heading out on the town to have dinner with his friends.

After the pharmacy excursion, we went back to the apartment before heading down to grab some gelato and walk along the river to show Allison Ponte Vecchio. This was Allison’s chance to do all the things she was jealous of the boys and I doing yesterday. We walked the beautiful bridge again and by the time we made the rounds, we were hungry again, despite the gelato. We found a place steps from our apartment. It was a small place with delicious sandwiches on focaccia.

Soon enough, it was nap time and, thankfully, after all the walking the boys went right to sleep. I did too. Allison went to work. When the boys woke up we snacked a little more and got ready. They were pumped to go back to the carousel. We made our way to the carousel and saddled our horses for the short ride. The boys enjoyed it. I got my own horse too and when I got off it halfway through to see how they were each doing, Silas yelled at me to get back on my horse.

After our ride, and a quick stop at the supermarket, we came back to the apartment to hang out before the bedtime routine. Silas and I played Mario and I enjoyed the quality time with the little guy. He was jolly and, after the challenges we’ve had in public, it was nice to hang out and laugh together. They went off to sleep pretty easily. I really enjoyed my time with them today and it totally made up for yesterday.

Since Allison was still working and able to listen out for them, I decided to go out and try to find a café to read while enjoying a cocktail. I don’t know if it was because it was a weeknight or offseason or both, but it was weirdly dead. The place I found was more ritzy than I would usually prefer. It was in the same piazza as the carousel and was enclosed from the cold and had easy chairs along the windows. When I arrived, I was the only one there, but it was really pleasant and relaxing. There was a women playing piano and singing and I enjoyed a really good martini and pate while reading Metamorphoses by Ovid.

I am grateful for such a beautiful, fun, and spontaneous day after the challenge of yesterday. I’m hoping tomorrow will follow suit as we explore more and maybe try a museum (do we even dare.)

I can’t believe it’s already day ten! It is weird how fast time seems to be going, but at the same time we are starting to feel some pangs of homesickness. I think the boys are too. They are constantly talking about how excited they are to go to Coco and Pop’s house after Italy and how they want to see Grandma Linny and Dodo. It’s been a revolving door of change for them over the past ten days and I think they are craving something familiar. I think Allison and I are feeling that a bit too.

The boys woke up in the sixes again and, since today was a travel day, we hung around for most of the morning eating breakfast and packing. We caught our bus and made it to the train station like actually know what we’re doing now. It was around 11:00 AM and our train was slightly delayed. Since it seems everyone is always hungry in our family, we went to grab a bite to eat in the meantime. Funny enough, upstairs in the Rome Termini station is a Five Guys, and it looks like it was plucked out of somewhere in the US. Not a detail was different. Even the entire menu was still only in English. This was a bit of familiarity we needed. We ordered some burgers and dogs and they came just like they would in the States. It was a little taste of home.

We finished just in time to catch our train and enjoy the short 1.5 hour ride up to Florence. Beren was well behaved for most of the ride, but Silas was not enjoying it. I’m not sure if it’s just coincidence or all the change has spurred it on, but Silas’ attitude over the past few days has entered full blown terrible twos. Often he insists on having something, wining until you give it to him only to then freak out when you do. Additionally, he has now decided that Daddy is no longer cool, so he will often refuse to let me hold his hand, sit next to him, or carry him, which has put a constant burden on Allison which, to no surprise, she has born graciously.

Once we arrived in Florence, we made the walk to the building where our apartment is. It is adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria and the Palazzo Vecchio. Our host let us in and took us up what is quite possibly the smallest, most narrow elevator I’ve ever been in. My brief bout of claustrophobia subsided as we went through three more locked doors to enter our apartment. To get a sense of what the security in this place is like, there was a key to get in the front door, then the elevator. Then an eight digit code on a keypad to open the next door. Then a different key for the third door which led to a little foyer housing the final door which took a final key to unlock two deadbolts. I’m pretty sure the gold in Fort Knox will not be as secure as we will be tonight.

The view out the window onto the Piazza is fabulous and equally fabulous was the unexpected view out the window of the shower, extending over the terracotta tiled rooftops to the red roof of the Duomo. The apartment itself is beautiful, albeit maybe not the most kid friendly. It’s spacious with herringbone wood floors and large wooden bookcases. It’s ornately adorned as if decorated by a stylish elderly woman, which will be a fun challenge with the little people. The one quirky thing is the hallway to the room where the boys are staying. It is like the hallway from the old Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie where they walk down it and the door at the end keeps getting smaller and smaller. I have to duck every time I enter it and it is barely wide enough to fit my shoulders.

We arrived right around nap time and I was excited to put the boys down, so I could spend some time to myself recuperating or exploring the streets while Allison began work. That’s when disaster struck. The boys were too amped up from our arrival to nap, and when I say, “too amped up”, I don’t mean they were just awake. I mean they were sprinting from wall to wall of the apartment, flailing their arms, and laughing maniacally. This is where my mental breakdown began.

I didn’t realize how much I was looking forward to the time by myself. With our schedule here, we are all around each other, or working and on calls with coworkers, from the moment our heads lift off the pillow to the moment they return. When they refused to nap, I tried to keep it together, but I started to lose it. We tried watching a show or two to calm down, but it didn’t work, so the boys and I got ready to go outside and walk around.

We went into the Piazza and chased some pigeons and looked at some statues for a few minutes before meandering through the narrow streets and finding the Arno River. There were some people rowing crew the boys and I watched for a few minutes. We then walked down to Ponte Vecchio, which is a medieval bridge lined with jewelry stores but, to my point earlier about Silas never wanting to hold my hand, it was at this stage in the outing that everyone was becoming a bit too squirrely, so I bribed them with gelato.

We twisted and turned through the streets and I tried to take in the beauty while being bombarded with constant questioning of where the gelato was. Ultimately, we came upon a gelateria/chocolate shop and stood in line. The place shined with the metallic multi-color wrappers of all different types of chocolates and behind the gelato counter it looked like liquid chocolate was flowing down the wall like a fountain. It was dessert heaven.

The gelato was creamy and delicious and we sat on a nearby stoop to eat it. It was our blissful moment. Then Beren had to go to the bathroom and we rushed back to the apartment. By this point it was still only the time the boys would be normally waking up from nap and I was out of things to do.

The evening consisted of me trying unsuccessfully to keep them entertained with anything I could think of, while also trying to not disturb Allison and not break anything in the apartment. I was not very successful and the constant cycle of disobedience followed by consequence followed by continued disobedience followed by another consequence really wore me down physically and mentally. Finally, Allison had a break and we walked to a restaurant for dinner. The dinner was ok food-wise, but it was at this point the boys started to crash and their happy-go-lucky disobedience turned into tired, angry disobedience.

By the time we made it back to the apartment, everyone had worn down, and thus calmed down, and it was when we all calmed down, the remorse set in. It had been a rough day all around. Beren knew he had been disobedient many times and I knew there were times, in my impatience and inconvenience, I had been too harsh with him, forgetting he and Silas are just kids trying to have fun and adjust to all of this like we are. We apologized, forgave each other, and embraced, and he and Silas went off to bed and finally to sleep.

Today was hard. For much of it I didn’t maintain a healthy level of mental and emotional stability and I am remorseful of that. I think a lot of that comes from a lack of inviting God’s presence to be with me, acknowledging constantly the peace of his goodness and providence. I try to control and orchestrate too much myself.

From the bits of Florence we saw today, I am eager to explore it more. It is breathtakingly beautiful and, while I’ve loved Rome, a nice change of pace. I knew not all days on this adventure would be perfect. My hope is tomorrow is a better one where we all get to enjoy the privilege of being in this place together.