Centro Storico

Today was our first full day in Florence. We had 2 things booked for today. The first was the Uffizi Gallery. I have said this before but artists amaze me. It was cool to see how into the art most of the kids were. But the different levels of interests causes logistical issues. Some would linger in a room while others would be 2 rooms ahead. Jen and I ended up spending much of our time just trying to keep our group together and know where everyone was. In the end the kids saw some amazing art and we spent around 3 hours in there. Everyone had their favorites and it sparked s lot of good conversation afterward.

Next we wandered Florence for a bit, found a great place to eat some pasta in the shade of the Duomo, and then we headed back to our place to refresh a bit and refill our water bottles because the next thing was the hike to the top of the Duomo.

Now... some of us are faster than others and it didn't take long before our groups got separated. When you go up the Dome, there is a ledge just under the ceiling where you come out into the cathedral, make your way around the wall and then you re-enter the passageways up to the top. We ended up getting paused on this ledge for quite awhile. Maybe they were trying to get previous groups down so they paused us so we wouldn't run into them, I am not sure. But with our separate groups, 3 of our kids got to head on up to the roof unsupervised while Jenny, Evan and I remained stalled on the ledge. That didn't cause us any stress at all 😉.

Eventually we all made it up and for the first little while we had the top almost to ourselves. It was cool. We took some pictures with the kids, walked around and saw all the sides, and "most" of us just enjoy being up there. Then it started to really get busy. There came a steady stream of people coming up to the roof and it became more and more congested and it took quite awhile for us to be able to go down. Again we got split into 2 groups and we slowly made our way back down to street level where we all met up again.

After that we had nothing else planned. We ended up going into the Baptistry as our ticket covered entry into that and it wasn't that busy, and it was something that Jen and I didn't do last time we were here because it was closed. So that was neat.

Then we headed back to our place for some showers and a bit of a siesta before we headed out once more for our supper reservation. Florence is famous for their Florentine steaks and I didn't have one last time we were here because Jenny doesn't enjoy rare meat. But this time I was not going to miss out. We had the meat eaters to take on the steak.

The meal was amazing, and the steak was huge. I thought I may have overestimated the eating potential of my boys but they exceeded my expectations and we managed to finish the steak off. 2.4 kg of meat on a 4" thick t-bone steak.... mmmmmmm....

Some of the kids even had enough room for dessert so we tried some creme brule and a lava cake. And then it was time to waddle back to our place for bed.

A great way to end our day in Florence.

Only one more full day here and then off to Rome. It is hard not to think about the trip coming to its end. The feelings of both sadness of this once in a lifetime trip that we have planned for years finally being done, and the feelings of looking forward to getting home. But we are all trying to stay in the now and just enjoy what we are doing. Tomorrow we see Michaelangelo's David. Then.... who knows where the day will take us.

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