Day 11

One nice thing about travelling far away is that you don't know anybody and they don't know you. This gives you the ability to act and dress completely out of character and it totally doesn't matter. It's a freedom we don't usually have. I like taking silly photos and not worrying about what I look like. Hey I only have one pack of clothes for 3 weeks- it's going to start getting scary at some point. 

I have found my inner Italian - I washed clothes and hung them out to dry on my balcony like all my neighbours this morning.

We did a bit of a grocery shop this morning. We need some breakfast and we wanted to grab things for our picnic lunch. The groceries stores here are interesting. You have to bag, weigh and label your own produce, the cashiers sit down and you can take a scanner gun and scan all your groceries as you shop, then you just hand the cashier the gun and you pay the total it shows- it was very interesting. 

We took the bus into the city centre and went to the train station to book our seats on the train to Venice tomorrow. It was a bit of a rigmarole, there are not many people you can ask for help, but we did get it sorted out at the kiosk. 

Florence is smaller then Rome and Paris but there is still a lot of walking involved. We hit another market- love those things. Nicole had a run in with a scarf seller who accused her of snagging one of his scarves with her ring. We got away from him quickly but not before he cursed our whole family-  what a nut job!

Next we saw what I think is the most beautiful building we have seen so far on our trip- the duomo. The whole building is made from coloured marble. It really is amazing. 

There sure are a lot of penises here in a Florence- everywhere you look they are just hanging out lol. We saw the statue of David and many, many others.

We did some more touring around through all the little alleyways and hit the Ponte Vecchio. It is this really neat bridge full of shops that sell only gold and jewelry.

Next we headed to the Bobolink Gardens. We love gardens and parks and were really excited to see this green space. We were disappointed that there was a €10 charge to get into the gardens but we paid it and we certainly had a good time in there. 

We walked up the steepest hill ever, it was a lot of hard work

But the view from the top was amazing. I love all the yellow buildings with the red tile roofs. 

We had some more gelato today, we are trying as many flavours as we can. Today I had vanilla and strawberry and Nicole had vanilla and raspberry, again they were all delicious!

We grabbed some dinner at another street cafe- we all had pasta tonight. We are tired, sunburn and very content this evening.