Italy (part 3): Florence
This post isn't as long as the others, but if you'd like to just look at pictures, click here!
The next morning we got up early from our hotel in Rome and left for Florence. We were able to store some of our luggage at the hotel so we didn't have to cart it all over, since we would be back at that hotel for one more night before we left Italy. We loaded the luggage into a small bus/van that took us to the car rental place at the airport. We rented 2 cars for traveling to the other cities we were visiting on our trip. That whole process didn't take too long and we were shortly on the road to Florence (we estimated about a 3-4 hour drive). I brought some fun new toys/books/etc for Kayla, but she was most interested in listening to a CD we made with Psalty songs. Our car had Dad, Brian, David, Kayla and I in it, so poor Dad and Brian got to listen to "Psalty the Singing Songbook and the Kids Praise & Worship Band" for HOURS. However, she didn't cry or fuss much at all (on this or any of our long car rides) so that was a blessing. Brian was also really good at entertaining her! Along this ride and many others, we were blessed with beautiful scenery. Italy has so many sunflower fields to make sunflower oil and the result is just massive areas of bright yellow. It was beautiful to view.
When we got to Florence and had found and checked into our hotel, we headed out for a tour of the town. Thankfully Florence is a much smaller city than Rome and there were fewer things to see, so we didn't need to go at a break-neck pace like we did in Rome. The first stop was the Florence Cathedral (Duomo). As soon as we got there we split up to eat lunch. We stopped at McD's to get Kayla something to eat and then David and I got some pizza. We brought it back and ate it on the steps in front of the Cathedral.
After eating lunch we went inside the church, where Kayla resumed her love of running in circles!
We then headed to the Palazzo Vecchio, where there is a copy of Michelangelo's David statue.
There were also lots of statues of lions and Kayla was enthralled! There were also lots of policemen walking around and every time Kayla saw one she would get all excited and point to them and say "policeman"!! So, we asked to take a picture with them. Yeah, we clearly stuck out as tourists!
Then we walked and viewed a few other churches before going to the Ponte Vecchio.
By now it was about dinnertime. We had picked out an adorable outside eating area to dine at, however David and I decided it would be better for our family to head off by ourselves. It would have been a bit more of an expensive meal than we wanted and it was a bit fancier than what we felt Kayla was capable of handling. If she had a meltdown, we didn't want to have to shelter other guests from her tantrums and end up not enjoying the meal ourselves. So instead we walked around and ventured into a small diner to eat dinner. Then we did what I would consider the highlight of Kayla's day - stopped to listen to some musicians (and of course what good is music without Kayla running in circles)! We were really happy that we had chosen to spend some time as just the three of us (up until this point of the trip we hadn't really done that at all, it had always been the larger group) and also to be able to give Kayla some freedom that she was so desperately craving.
After we'd put Kayla to bed that night, we had mom keep an ear out for her (our group took up the entire floor of the small hotel, so she would have easily been able to hear Kayla if she was crying) and David and I went on a walk to get some gelato. This was the first time on the trip that we had gotten away from Kayla, and even though it was for only like 30 minutes, it was nice to be able to debrief on things from our trip and to not have to worry about her.
The next morning we were able to sleep in a little bit and then headed to the open air market that was just 2 blocks from our hotel. We shopped for an hour or so, most of which Kayla (thankfully) slept. We bargained our way into some great deals on souvenirs!
After shopping we quickly grabbed lunch and headed back to the cars to drive to Venice.