Day 4 Florence (again)

Getting into Florence was a cinch today taking only 35 minutes, however Samuel & Theo didn’t actually have a bus permit today, so we had to quick drop & dust off in stealth mode. Some Louisiana students had already secured Uffizi museum tickets weeks ahead of time. Rentar suggested to us that we also go to the Uffizi, but our kids wanted to instead head across the river and see the Bobali botanical gardens thinking it might be cheaper. This turned out to be a huge mistake, as John got tickets super easy, and got in after only a 15 minute wait, while we went to the gardens, and found it is 10 Euro just to enter and look around, which we later balked at. Moral of the story, From now on if John suggests we do something, DO IT.

Our Florence walking tour guide wasn’t bad. She took us across town entering into the Duomo’s lower level until we lost several of the Louisiana girls, which John went back and found. The guide showed us various sites, including Dante’s (pictured here) neighborhood, and Michelangelo’s house. This time the guide’s speakers (whispers) actually worked, and we were left with a ton of extra free time, as not enough people signed up for the Pisa excursion.

We killed time by checking out various shops, San Lorenzo markets, having a few drinks overlooking the Ponte Vecchio bridge, touched the lucky boar’s nose for good luck, and viewed other sites around the city.

Probably the high light for me on this day was ending up in Basilica of Sante Croche. This is the church where 4 famous bodies are buried, Machiavelli, Galileo, Dante, Michelangelo (who’s body was smuggled back to Florence out of Rome), and an empty grave for Leonardo who was buried in France? This place is like a who’s who of the Renaissance and while I have passed it about a dozen times walking by, it was the first time I ventured inside.

Anyway, the church was quite impressive, as here are some shots of the inside.

Saw the beginnings of a nice sunset over the Arno before heading back to the hotel. Lasagna for dinner, without much meat though. Packed up my suitcase explosion and sat out on our balcony. Of the entire trip, I would say this day could have been scheduled by EF a little better, as we had already been around Florence the day before, and got the tour guide on the 2nd day which I tought sort of defeated the purpose. Oh well, spending an extra day in such a nice city such as Florence was not too hard to bear.