Italy (Part 2): Florence

Eurostar train

Mom and Clark

For this segment of the trip we took the super fast Eurostar train for the 2 hour ride from Venice to Florence where we caught a 5 minute cab ride to our friend's home on the other side of the River Arno. There we were warmly welcomed by the entire family and were quickly whisked off to San Miniato Al Monte, an amazing church where we hoped to see monks sing vespers (but because it was a holiday in Italy the schedule had changed). Then it was on to a "girl's night out" for Karen with Alison and a bunch of fellow ex-pats and a chance for the boys to play futbol with our friend's kids' friends, followed by catching up back at their beautiful home over an amazing selection of local antipastas as well as delicious Italian vino.



Boys with "David" (I had just
asked them to pose naked and
they were not amused).

Candy at the Christmas market

The next day I joined Alison while she played tennis with girlfriends (on a real clay court) and the boys got some game time on the Kinect as well as target practice with the boys' nerf gun artillery. We then spent the day wandering around the streets of Florence, hitting the local Christmas market, loading up on candy for the boys and visiting the Galileo Museum whose highlight included a display with his actual forefinger and thumb (ick). That evening another high school classmate of Nat's and her Italian boyfriend joined us for drinks and we ordered in yummy Italian pizza.

Local vegetable market

Colin enjoying Italian stew

On Saturday Alison arranged for us to take a Taste Florence tour which I highly recommend to anyone travelling to Florence. Started by a young American woman of Italian heritage a few years back as a way to stay in Italy, she takes folks on an extended tour of the local markets, bakeries and meat, cheese and wine shops including explanations and tastings of olive oils, balsalmic vinegars and a variety of other foods (we even visited a fancy wine cellar). Although the boys didn't appreciate all the specialty items, the gelateria's were a definite hit.





On our final day in Florence we had a lovely afternoon lunch at the 4 Leoni, our friend's local neighborhood Trattoria. Florence was a true highlight of our time abroad so far and we can't thank our friends enough for their generosity and hospitality.

Catching raindrops off the rooftops

Smoking pig head

Our next stop was Bologna where we planned to spend the night as we flew out from there the next day. I didn't book this train trip ahead of time as I wasn't sure what time we wanted to leave town and I knew the trains left every half hour for the 30 minute trip. Unfortunately when we showed up at the train station that afternoon we discovered that all the trains were sold out until 10pm that night as it was the end of a 4 day holiday weekend. We also found out that we couldn't take a bus until the next day and I had already reserved our hotel in Bologna. Soooooo..... we bit the bullet and talked a very nice english speaking cab driver in to getting us safely to our hotel. It took him an hour and a half to get us there and although he gave us a discounted rate suffice it to say we went way over budget.