Firenze (Florence), Italy

The day after we went to San Marino we decided to finally make a trip down to Florence. I don't know if we can say we really "saw" Florence after this trip and to be honest, it wasn't near the top of our favorite places we've been so far.  However, we didn't see a lot of the really famous stuff that is there and we had a pretty cranky baby most of the day, so that might have contributed to our overall impression of the city.

The first thing we happened upon while walking down the street was the Medici chapel, which was actually one of the things I really wanted to see.  I remember learning about the Medici family in my sophomore history class, and we did some gruesome reenactment of someone in the family getting murdered during church. I have no idea if it was this church, but the name and at least a vague recollection of the story stuck out to me.

Here is the outside of the church:

There was a courtyard in the middle of the Medici complex and Michael found a kitty, so we had to sit and watch him sleep for awhile.  He was much more entertained by this cat than anything we saw in the treasury or library.

The first stop was the treasury and Donatello's tomb.  You weren't supposed to take pictures in there so Robbie only snuck one in the treasury. I was surprised by how plain and unceremonious Donatello's tomb was. It was very plain and just kind of a slab on the ground as opposed to a lot of the really fancy gravestones and crypts you find elsewhere in Italy.

We also went up to the library. Robbie got a better view of this than I did because I was baby-wrangling and had to pretty much walk in and walk back out. But there was this fancy staircase, some cool mosaics on the floor, and some neat old books.

We left the Medici Chapel and walked a little ways towards our lunch spot and caught out first glimpse of the duomo!  It was huge and beautiful.  Michael was starving so we had to move quickly past and get lunch.

Although we were in Florence, we were hungry for American food and went to the Hard Rock Cafe.  Besides watching the cat, this was the happiest Michael was all day playing peek-a-boo with himself in the mirror while wearing a fedora.  He was pretty cute.

After lunch we walked down to the Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge and saw some monks on the way:

The view from the Ponte Vecchio:

I had read about this famous bridge with all the shops on it and we were pretty underwhelmed by the whole thing. Like most of Florence, it was completely packed so all you could really do was shuffle along and wait your turn for a little gap to take your picture. The shops didn't look like they had anything worth fighting the crowds to browse though, and we pretty much walked onto the bridge and walked off as fast as we could while trapped in the sea of people.

We walked to the Palazzo Vecchio where there were a bunch of people and replicas of some famous statues. This was at least nice to have a bit of wide-open space!

The next stop was the duomo.  I love churches and really wanted to make it inside this one, which is most famous for Brunelleschi's Dome, an architectural marvel for its time made of over 37,000 tons of brick.  I loved the outside of this cathedral.  It was really stunning with the green/red/black colors and all the lines and details.  And it's huge.  Most cathedrals are large, but this one seemed quite a bit bigger than some of the other ones we've been in.

The inside was beautiful as well, but I was expecting it to be more detailed and ornate like the exterior.  It was very light and open, but didn't have a ton of decoration like the cathedrals in Siena and Ferrara.

There were some cool frescoes on the inside of the dome:

We walked through family quickly and walked around the perimeter of the church to see if from all sides.  It was impressive all the way around!
 

There was the option to purchase tickets to go up and walk around the top near the base of the dome, but the line was wrapping all around the side of the church and we didn't think we could wait that long with Michael.

With that, we decided we needed to head home.  We didn't make it to any of the big museums to see the artwork at the Uffizi Gallery or the David at the Academia.  I would also like to go back and see Balboi Gardens and the view of the city from Piazzale Michelangelo. There also looked like there was great shopping there, if you had time in sightseeing for that!  We left feeling a little claustrophobic because everything is so close together and there are so many people. We still have more to see in Florence, but I think we'll wait to go back in the off-tourist season and hopefully will have a better experience!

San Marino

Robbie ended up with a few days off right around Easter and he had been wanting to go visit San Marino for a couple of months.  San Marino is a tiny little independent republic located right in the middle of the Italian coast.  Some friends of ours had been already and we had so many questions. Did we need our passports? Do we have to go through customs? Do they take Euros even though they're not a member of the European Union? As we tend to do, we didn't look too carefully into any of these questions before we left and figured we'd wing it once we got out there.

I'll admit that I wasn't too excited for this particular day trip.  I hadn't really heard of San Marino before and didn't know anything about it or what there was to see there.  By the end of the day, I was impressed and it actually turned out to be one of my favorite day trips we've done so far.

San Marino is the most famous for the three towers that sit on the three peaks of Monte Titano.

We parked and hiked up the mountain a little way until we got to the old stone walkways that led to the towers.  They were really cool and old looking, plus had amazing views in every direction.

Before heading inside the towers, we walked around a little bit and enjoyed some of the beautiful spring weather and scenery.  The trees and flowers were blooming and it made for a relaxing walk.

The first thing we came across was the Basilica of San Marino.  I don't think you're supposed to take pictures inside, but Robbie can't resist.

Then we walked back up to start the tour of the towers.  By that time, it was already kind of late in the day so we were only going to have time to see two of the towers.  I think why I liked these so much was because besides the ticket-takers at the gate, there wasn't anyone else around.  The towers were just open to explore, climb around in, and have fun without having to do any "tour" kind of things through it.

We took turns climbing to the top of the tower since it was too steep and narrow to bring Michael up in the hiking backpack and enjoyed the views from the top:

Room at the top of the tower

Narrow walkway around the tower

We had a little snack and played around a big in the courtyard of the first tower and then moved onto the second.

The second tower was set up a little more like a museum with various weapons, shields, and armor on display.  Some of the swords were bigger than me!

We climbed around on the tower of this one too, and actually all made it up at the same time with Michael.

On a clearer day, I think you would have been able to see all the way to the coast.  It was a really fun, laid-back, and relaxed day.  Sometimes it's nice to travel without a strict agenda and just see where you end up, and this was one of those days.

And, in case anyone was curious, you don't need a passport or to go through customs to visit San Marino, they do accept the Euro, but our cell phones only work in Italy so to use them in San Marino we would have had to upgrade to the European travel plan!

Porto Venere and Pisa, Italy

During our Cinque Terre stay, we opted to stay in nearby Porto Venere instead of in one of the five towns. It was more accessible (you can't drive your car in the towns), and another town to visit.  We left after work on Friday and arrived just in time for sunset.

Our friend Sally had found the hotel we stayed in and it was amazing.  Even Michael got excited and started running around when he saw our balcony.  The owners were probably in their 70s, and got such a kick out of Michael's reaction they told our friends all about the other "American baby" when they checked in.  He said they had the balconies extended a few years back, so it was almost like having a little yard overlooking the water and the main part of Porto Venere.  We had some deck chairs to relax, and a road ran right under the balcony which provided endless entertainment for Michael watching all the cars and bikes.  At one point, he woke up from a dead sleep, sat straight up and yelled "BUS!" when he heard a bus drive by.

The first night we all settled in, had a laid-back pizza dinner on the balcony, and enjoyed the view.  Living in a foreign country can be stressful and overwhelming sometimes--everything becomes complicated when there's a language barrier and a process for accomplishing things you're not familiar with. We don't always realize how stressed we get until the stress is gone, and it seemed like for all three of us in our family, it melted away as soon as we stepped out on that balcony.  It was a nice change!

We spent all day Saturday exploring the five towns of Cinque Terre, so Sunday we opted to explore Porto Venere a little big.  We had a nice lunch with our friends at a little restaurant by the water.

Michael loved watching everything happening around the water; the waves lapping up on the rocks, the birds flying around and landing in the water, the sailboats drifting by.  He had a great time running around watching everything and climbing things.

After dinner we walked up the hill a little ways up to the old city, built on the rocks overlooking the ocean.  The rocky cliffs reminded me a lot of the beaches we left behind in California and I think that made us feel even more at home.

There was another old, small church there too, right on the side of the cliff. It was really pretty inside, and you could climb up to a viewing platform on top for even better views of the coastline.

After lunch and a little exploring, we got gelato (we always get gelato) and then started back to our cars so we could head home and recover before everyone had to return to work the next day.

Robbie and I decided to take a little detour on the way home to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was only about 40 minutes out of the way, and we've heard that while it's cool to see, there isn't much else to see in Pisa that would make it worth a 6 hour round-trip drive from Ferrara.

We got there and parked without incident.  We had a grumpy baby on our hands so we took our silly tourist pictures holding up the tower, walked around the Field of Miracles for a few minutes, then just decided to head back towards home before Michael totally lost it on us.

I would have enjoyed going inside the church and the baptistery.  Apparently the acoustics in the baptistery are such that you can sing harmonies with yourself.  This is (so I hear) demonstrated by a guard every 15 minutes or so.  The line for tickets was pretty long, and we didn't think anyone would want to hear Michael screams echoing around and around, so we skipped it.

Maybe sometime if we're in the area again, we'll try again.  Pisa was very impressive, the buildings were massive, and it was fun to see and cross off our list of places to visit.