Florence!

Florence began with me falling into the arms of a mountaineer with a 3 feet long grey beard. No, literally. It turns out that I weigh less than my 187 pound suitcase even after eating pizza after pizza so when I got off the train the suitcase flung me forward and next thing I know I’m flying through the Florence train station into the arms of Mountaineer Man. Anna later admitted that she gave me “a little push” to make sure I got off the train in time. We then scurried away from the train station, where I noticed a heavier presence of armed soldiers than I ever had before in Florence. I know they’re here to keep us safe but they are terrifying with their machine guns! Our apartment was in a lovely part of the city on the same street as Valentino and Gucci and Burberry (“these are my people” exclaimed Anna staring into the shop windows) so we felt safe. The apartment was modern with a marble shower and a large living room which was perfect for tea time! Mom did well!! This trip was a bit last minute so apparently it was one of the only apartments left in the city (probably because of the cost!) but no complaints here!!! We all fell asleep quickly, even Anna and Grace (this alone was worth the cost of the apartment so that Anna could be comforted going to sleep knowing she was by “her people” 😂😂😂). The next morning we found an adorable bar across the street with reasonable prices (I refuse to pay more than 1 euro for a croissant or cup of coffee because I know that’s how much it should cost unless it is a tourist trap) where we gobbled down croissants (but not chocolate ones) and coffee. On our walk to Santa Cruce, Anna saw chocolate croissants inside a bar. I gave her a euro and told her how to order one in Italian. She then went into the bar alone and ordered a chocolate croissant “la porta via” (to go). Anna nibbled on her second croissant in 20 minutes during our walk to the church. Inside the church, the tombs of Michelangelo, Dante and Galileo awaited us!!!  Frescos painted by Giotto adorned the walls and we eagerly followed along on the interactive i-pad tour guide. After spending a couple hours in the church we headed to a pizza place I had scouted out online, where we enjoyed our best pizza yet in Italy. I got pizza Napoli which has anchovies. Grace wanted to branch out so she wanted to try it. After seeing the fish on the pizza she no longer wanted to branch out and continued to devour her pizza margarita. 

After lunch we saw the David. I remain unconvinced that grace and Anna were old enough to appreciate it without shyly averting their eyes, but my mom thought they were so we toured the Uffizi with tickets she had generously purchased for all 4 of us. It turns out that children under 18 are free, so when I return on another trip with Ben or my niece (any bambina yet Katie???!?) I will not be scammed again and won’t purchase tickets for them. Exploring Florence was delightful but one by one we began to crash around 7pm. A nasty virus somehow found us and by 7:30 we were too tired to take another step.  We anxiously looked for somewhere to eat but each time we stopped to read a menu we saw a greedy restaurant owner (literally) rub his hands together and begin to walk toward us to convince us to dine at his barely serviceable and expensive tourist trap of a restaurant. Ultimately we found the least tourist trap of all the tourist trap restaurants and had fun eating together. The food was nothing to write home about but the atmosphere was lovely (dark with candles and small—only 4 tables in the whole place). After dinner I went to send a Snapchat and was horrified at the face looking back at me.   I asked Lydia why she hadn’t told me I had mascara drooping down my face. She said with a laugh that she thought it was just bags under my eyes, which was my cue to head us back to our apartment to get to sleep early. It wasn’t early enough because when our alarms went off at 7:30Am in order to make the 9am train I couldn’t get Lydia to get up and grace and Anna were still sleeping. I decided to let them sleep in hopes they’d sleep off their virus. Unfortunately we all woke up at 9 with inflamed throats and pounding heads. We gobbled down ibuprofen and hot tea and,  skipping the croissants,  raced to the train station to make the 10:10 train. We arrived just in time at 10:02 to find that the 10:10 train had been  CANCELLED.  MAMA MIA. I found a 10:28 train and regrouped by ushering everyone to a world renowned cafe—MCDONALDS— for a quick croissant and coffee. We hopped on the 10:28 train and hauled our luggage car after car looking for a seat. We sat for a short three stops before getting off to change trains. I was terrified that we wouldn’t get off at the right stop so I had made the Trenitalia man write it down after I heard him say “get off at the Heroine stop” Good thing I did because what he wrote was quite different than what I heard him say “Emoli.” He also told us we would wait 10 minutes for our connecting train, but in typical Italian style we waited 50 minutes. While waiting we enjoyed a second round of chocolate croissants and cafe americano! I never get tired of chocolate croissants!!! We had fun at the Emoli train station, located in the middle of nowhere really. A few locals popped in, but more or less, we were on our own to enjoy our second breakfast.  The train ended up being packed—so full that we had to ride standing up balancing our suitcases and backpacks for 1.5 hours! Anna and Grace were troopers! I have been amazed at how wonderful, kind, and even tempered  they have been on this trip. They have become noticeably aware of how small they are compared to the great, big world filled with great, big people and that’s humbling to anyone who realizes. Moreover it’s inspiring to see ones so young realize their littleness. Nothing like seeing the works and the grave of Michelangelo among others to have that effect.