 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Florence | ||||||||||||||
| After our stay in Arezzo, we went for several days to Florence (Firenze). Chiara set us up with a friend who has an apartment in the heart of Florence. It was a GREAT place to stay, and allowed us easy walking access to all of the major Florence sites! | ||||||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||||||
| We rented a loft apartment from one of Chiara's friends. It was quite nice and centrally located within Florence. This is a shot of Sophie and Sarah on the pull-out couch that they slept in. | ||||||||||||||
| These are some of the many shops (mostly jewelry) on the Ponte Vecchio connecting one side of Florence to the other. Claudia LOVED the jewelry shops and was also fascinated with the interesting wood working of the coverings for the various shops (see the closed ones on the left). If you look REALLY closely, you can see Steve & the girls at the end of the bridge on the left. | ||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
| This is a shot of the Duomo & the Palazzo Vecchio. | ||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
| This is another shot of the Ponte Vecchio looking down the Arno river. This is the exact spot that we occupied at midnight on New Year's eve 2006. It was QUITE the party, and we now know that all those bottles of champaign the Italians were carrying were NOT for drinking but rather for shaking up and spraying the crowds with champaign!!! | ||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
| Here are the girls at the top of the tower. You can see the top of the Duomo (which was unfortunately closed when we visited) and a bit of the city. There was quite a wind at the top of the tower, and you can see the girls were here trying to get out of the windiest areas. | ||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
| View from one of the towers in the Santa Maria del Fiore showing an expanse of the city. This was one of several "tower hikes" on our Italian trip! The girls did quite well in all the various hikes up these narrow stairways (see also the Bologna pictures). | ||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
Here's a shot of Steve and Sarah in another restaurant near our apartment. One of the best things about Italy was its great wines, and you can see a selection of such wines on the wall on the back wall. In this shot, it looks like Steve may have imbibed a few glasses of wine before this shot was taken?
|
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
| i | ||||||||||||||
| Here is a shot of the girls outside one of the excellent eateries we frequented in Florence. In this shot, the girls are standing next to a suit of armor sporting the Florence Municipal Coat of Arms. | A big hit for the girls was the gelato! They sampled MANY different varieties in the various spots we visited! |
|||||||||||||