Florence

Florence was beautiful. Lots of old churches and art and wonderful food. The most recognizable landmark is the Duomo. It is on top of one of the churches in Florence. It is in all the post cards. It is hard to tell in the picture, but the Duomo is absolutely huge, an architectural masterpiece apparently. I thought it was pretty impressive. I like all the colors in the Italian architecture. All of the churches were made of the same materials. This white marble, with blue and pink details. They all used it differently, but it had a nice uniformity to it. We went inside one of the churches. It was large and beautiful, no pews. But it did not inspire the awe that Notre Dame or some of the Irish churches have. I am not sure why. Anyway, here is the front of one of the churches. There was lots of beautiful art there. And unfortunately, most of it you cannot take pictures of. No cameras allowed in the Uffizi at all. They have a Bottecelli room in there that was fabulous. We also saw Michaelangelo's David at the Academia. Now you are not supposed to take pictures in there either, but I snuck one. Shh....Don't tell.We also did a lot of shopping. It is the home of wonderful leather and gorgeous cashmere and all kinds of other tempting things. We shopped in the stores a bit, but our favorite places to shop were in the huge amounts of outdoor markets that they had there. Not as claustophobic or dirty as the ones down in the Carribbean, but the same idea. Haggling and stuff. It was really fun, despite the slightly cold weather. The lady kind of got in the way, but this gives you an idea.The views were beautiful, especially off the river Arno. Here is one of my favorite shots from the bridge we crossed from our hostel to city center every day.But perhaps our favorite pastime in Florence was eating the gelato. Now you may think that gelato is just ice cream in Italian, but you would be very wrong. It is much better than regular old ice cream. I guess it is made differently. But it is soooo good, rich and smooth and like flavors that explode in your mouth. It was worth a trip to Italy just to eat it. It was cold enough that we needed scarves and gloves, especially at night, but the gelato was so good we had to eat it even in this weather. So here we are enjoying our lovely gelatos! From left to right- me, Alexis and Hayden, Janet is taking the picture.We had a lovely time. Four days in Florence is definitely an experience I would repeat. Now I don't have any pictures of them, but they had these cute little wine bars all over. Different than the wine bars in the states, they only served wine to drink and had different ones every day. It was €4 for most wines, a big glass too and some of the rare vintages went up to €12 a glass. They were very posh and I really liked them. Anyway, that was my trip in a nutshell. Will post more soon now that I am back in Dublin. Love you all.