Florence and Pisa

We arrived in Florence on Monday night and started our evenings of hotel dinners. Gotta say, nobody was super impressed. When you're in Italy, you want the real Italian food!! The hotel food didnt cut it. It was part of the tour cost, so it was essentially a free meal, but it was disappointing... I have the best memory of food in Rome since that's where I had my meals outside of hotels. That's the good stuff!!

I cant recall the name of this massive church we first saw in Florence. I took several photos and couldnt get it all in, so I decided to take a video of the thing. I took a few side shots. You cant explain how big this place was. It looked like a big deck of cards built up. This church is significant because it is one of the few domes in the world, and one of the largest, that was built without supports and they are still unable to determine today how it was built. Kinda cool right? We also passed by Michelangelo's childhood house.

You'll see one picture of me and LeeAnn with a *slightly* older woman, Maggie in front of a river in Florence. She was a character. This woman was born and raised in Brooklyn and had the accent along with the personality. She was right out of The Sopranos or the Godfather (literally!). Maggie's father was a Mob boss! Haha. She told us story upon story about her body guards that followed her around everywhere as a child. She was never allowed to stay at anybody else's house. Even now she's not allowed to go certain places (she mentioned Turkey or Morocco) b/c she cant be protected. The stories she told... and she's a Lawyer and a Doctor, and her husband Jimmy is some big shot business man who comes from European royalty! Lemme tell ya, this couple was a trip! But they were so sweet. Seeing as we were poor college kids, they offered to buy us a drink (since all we had been ordering was tap water!! LOL). And we even had dinner with them our last night in Rome after the tour was over. Funny couple!! (Mommy, Jimmy even helped me pick out something for you... he seemed to have a very good eye!)

It was in Florence that LeeAnn and I got to know Katherine, the girl from Sydney. Katherine and I became close buds after the morning Florence tour was over b/c the tour ended in a leather shop (Florence is famous for it's leather making... and I confess, I bought a few things...), and a salesman grabbed me and Katherine and started dressing us in amazing leather jackets. Long ones, short ones, reversible ones, the softest things you've ever felt! This man was doing whatever he could to get us to walk out of there with jackets. ["People do really stupid things in foreign countries"... "Absolutely. They buy leather jackets for much more than they're worth. But they don't fall in love with fascist dictators!" Come on! You know You know it!!]... I had this one great one that was actually hand painted! Ha! Whoever heard of such a thing. And it was sad not to buy one, but Katherine bought a jacket, so good for her! I bought myself a new wallet and a belt (the wallet cost more than the belt!). I felt like I finally had a big-girl wallet. It was fancy and I was proud of it!

You'll see Katherine in the picture with me and LeeAnn in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. You'll also notice my strength in keeping the tower from falling over! The tower even had matching building sets. I've got one picture where you can see the cables that are holding the tower in place to keep from leaning even more!!

The 3 of us ladies took an hour long train ride out to Pisa from Florence. We figured we were so close we might as well take the chance. Plus, it was a nice break for my poor hurtin feet! We got there, took our pictures, then turned around and went back so we could get back just in time to the museum that held The David before it closed!

I've got a picture replica statue of The David, which we did get to see later that evening and it was one of the coolest things I saw the entire time! The detail was incredible. As we walked into the museum going towards this statue, you pass by 8 or 10 other unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo. It was really cool to see his process of carving. You know The David is so special because it was all carved from one piece of marble, instead of how most sculptors did and use different pieces of stone and put them all together. With the unfinished pieces, you could see how he started sculpting front to back, because you do wonder how the process was done.

That was a fun day and a long day. After the museum we rushed back to the leather factory just as they were locking up because LeeAnn and I had thought about a few more things we wanted to purchase... Oh well, guess we waited too late (it's fine b/c once back in Rome, and even Venice for me, we bought a few more leather pieces)