florence

The week after Christmas we took a trip down to Florence. It's only a 5-6 hours from our home. We were hoping to find art, gelato, sun and pizza. We found all but sun. Three out of four is not bad. 

 After parking our car and getting settled in the airbnb, we headed out to our first pizza place. We had sold Florence and its wealth of churches and museums to our kids by calling it a quest for the best pizza and gelato.

 In the rush to get the car packed and meet Rocky's train from Brussels, I forgot a few things including my camera. Eliot said, 'that must be why Santa brought me a camera, because he knew you would forget yours.' She is just sunshine.

 We did a lot of walking and exploring and blew a lot of people's minds with our four kids. It's possible Winston blew a few people's knee caps by darting in front of them on the rainy streets.

 The pizza quest was a big deal. We ate pizza for lunch and dinner for four days straight.
(Another of my main motivations for heading down to Italy was so that we could eat out at restaurants every meal. In Switzerland the restaurants are quite expensive and we've have only eaten at a restaurant once as a family--kebabs when our shipment arrived.)

 Florence was beautiful.

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 Our second quest was for gelato. We made a mistake of just popping into a touristy shop for our first stop. It was good but I knew there was better. So I went to my trusty Tripadvisor and we found a list of gourmet gelato shops. The real stuff is a million times better. It's worth finding it. Even my kids appreciated it.

 We spent a lot of time on this carousel.  A lot.

 These two girls are such great friends. Winston's museum face.

 We ate a lot of pizza and gelato. Our kids may have appreciated the gourmet gelato, but their favorite pizza was from the kebab shop.

 We took a day trip to Pisa--because, well, why not. Winston's favorite train, Emily. Who may have remained in Florence.

 These girls were such troopers. We went to a lot of churches and museums and they had a great time doing the activities in their Tava passport. We had to drag Eliot out of the Uffizi Gallery after two hours.

 There was also a lot of Supercats played. More than I would care too admit. But I loved seeing my kids playing with each other so happily--even if it was done virtually.

Rocky's highlight of the trip was the 1.2 kilo T-bone steak. Which is apparently a Florentine specialty.  It was a good holiday. It also made for a lot of laundry.