Florence

The next stop on our journey took us to Florence.  Florence is one of those places that we probably never would have stopped at were it not for Rick Steves' travel books.  It was suggested to us, so we put it on our agenda. 

Like most places in Italy, it has a beautiful church with a baptistery that is situated on a piazza.  But this church was exquisite and the city is very accessible even though cars are not allowed in the main part of the city.  Apart from an occasional taxi, all of the traffic is foot-traffic.  This made it particularly charming and safe. 

The church here is more beautiful than most and the city has kind of a laid-back feel.  The streets are lined with street venders who sell various wares, but largely leather goods.  There is a leather training school here and many of the

venders seek to unload purses, belts, and jackets.  As a part of the downtown area, there is a large market which looks more like a food court in the top floors.  There is a cooking school inside the market and each area sells a different type food cooked by students who are learning their trade.  The food is good, inexpensive, and chic.  I think we ate here for every meal and never had the same things. 

We also had the opportunity to do some things in Florence that we would not on our normal budget.  It has been well documented that I am a tightwad.  On family vacations we will splurge a bit, but it is rare that we just spent money

lavishly.  Because of the money provided by the grant, we were able to do something that was sort of extravagant--we rented Segways (English majors: I know that segue is spelled "segue," but this is how they spell Segway in Italy).  This experience appealed to my practical side--we were only in Florence for a short time and riding Segways enabled us to cover a lot of ground in a short period of time.  Plus, since cars were restricted here, I felt we could be relatively safe.  And I thought it would be something memorable that the kids would enjoy.  When I told them that we were doing this, they all looked at this cheapskate they have known their whole lives and said, "What!!" 

Everyone had a great time learning to ride these.  They go faster than you'd expect and they are steered by your body movement, so it's challenging to get it to feel right. You have to relax or else it will do wacky things. We did have a couple of incidents.  Madi hit a parked moped.  Stacy hit a stop sign with her wheel which caused her to spin out and fall at the base of the sign.  Passersby yelled at the rest of us and said, "Hey, your grandma hit a stop sign!" and we were able to get her back on the road. 

We mapped a path that took us to some of the sights in Florence.  Ponte Vecchio is a famous bridge that has shops built into the side of the bridge.  It originally housed butcher shops that were built on the bridge because it was handy to throw the offal (guts) into the river.  Today, it has normal touristy shops.  There is an ancient palace here.  But most famous of all in Florence is the statue of David at
the Uffizi gallery.  This is the naked statue of young David carved by Michelangelo.  It sits in a square with several other statues which are pretty impressive.  That was fun to roll up on during our Segway experience. 

Florence is a beautiful little town with lots of nice features and we enjoyed it tremendously.  We will forever remember the beautiful sites, and good food, but also the experience of trying to hang on to a Segway while touring the city.