I’ve been warned not to visit Florence in August, but we are going to try it anyway. My parents offer to take the kids for the day, so Stefan and I can move among busy streets and museums easier. It’s awesome.

The drive into Florence is a mess. There’s such severe traffic that we sit still for about 40 minutes. The entire drive was supposed to take one hour, but it takes closer to two. By the time we find parking in the city, I am sure this day trip is not worth the drive. The parking garage is underneath a marketplace, so the chaos begins immediately. Our first goal is to find the nearest place that sells the Firenze Card. This Card is expensive, but the secret to enjoying Florence at this busy time of year. We can skip the lines (often hours long) to enter every place in the city (72 museums to be exact).

//Stefan Notes: use Waze in Florence, saved us 50 minutes probably

First stop ends up being for food, even though we don’t want to stop for long. We order a plate of bruschetta, water and a beer for Stefan. The local beer is surprisingly good.

We pass a cool old church. Unfortunately I don’t know the name of it. It’s unique in that there are two equal parts right next to each other.

We make it to the Duomo, and wow. We’ve seen many impressive buildings on this trip, but this one is unique with its stripes of white and green. I love it. We can’t buy the Firenze Card here, so we plan to return once we have it.

We purchase our Firenze Cards at a museum that is closed today (no line). We want to go to the Duomo first, but as we make our way over there, we pass by a very old building. It’s a small museum included with our Firenze Card! It’s a very old house in the center of the city. You could walk by it without even noticing. We have access to the first floor (above the entry-level), and it’s huge! I can’t believe there are 4 floors in all. We walk through it in 10 minutes, and I’m glad we stop here. i like imagining how people lived in a different time and place. 

We walk to the Uffizi next because we want to make sure to see as much of the “essentials” as possible. We walk straight up to the reserved entry and are inside within 5 minutes. This Firenze Card is amazing. We don’t see the line on the other side of the building, but we know it’s hours long. The streets are so crowded, I think it’s worse than mall shopping before Christmas. I’d liken it more to Disneyland at the holidays. So. Many. People.

The Uffizi is large, but unlike the Louvre, there’s  clear way to walk to see everything. I like that. Like an Ikea. It’s amazing to see these masterpieces that you see in your school books growing up. The Venus doesn’t disappoint. There’s a room dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci’s works. Most of the paintings are works from churches, dating back to the 1300s. While they are magnificent, we find we can only look at so many before we’re ready to leave. We feel a little guilty about it, but there it is. We still manage to see every last piece in the The Uffizi. 

//Stefan Note: We had florence all to ourselves

While our visits so far are things the kids would have enjoyed or at least managed well, we are still thankful to have a day to ourselves here because the crowds are ridiculous. Stefan and I have difficulty walking together from one place to another. It would have taken at least twice as long with the kids.

We walk down some smaller streets (still not avoiding crowds) and find a great spot for a beer. There’s no one in this place in the middle of the afternoon, and they have Gose!

We are excited to use our Firenze Cards to skip the 2 hour line to see the inside, but I forgot to bring something to cover my shoulders! Stefan comments that if only I wasn’t dressed like a “hussy”. We figure we’ll come back to Florence another day this week, and we can see the inside of the Duomo then. (Later we learn that the Duomo is free, so everyone must stand in the ridiculous line to get inside. Yuck.)

Next door is the Baptistry, a beautiful large octagonal building built for the baptisms. The ceiling is covered in gold mosaic. It’s amazing.

We join everyone else on the streets eating gelato. It’s not one of the places listed as the best in the city, but it’s so so good, making me believe that you probably can’t go wrong here.

We make our way to the Galleria dell’Accademia to see the David.

At the Accademia, we wait in the reserved line with a family and their private tour guide behind us, speaking English. Awesome! We listen to some interesting history of the building and the city, including that Florence is where the first piano was made. And where the first opera was performed. It makes me wish we could have a private tour guide with us all the time for such tidbits of information. I can see how it’s particularly helpful when you have older kids, like this family does, to have information tailored to them and their interests.

I remember going here as a teenager, but wow it’s impressive all over again. The hall is long and narrow, and light shines down on him. It’s easy to understand how this statue offered strength to Florence residents as they passed it in the main square. It’s kind of sad to have him locked away in this place now.

It’s a very small museum, so it doesn’t take us long to see everything. The few unfinished works by Michelangelo are very interesting. I love imagining how he could see a figure inside a block of stone. There are many paintings as well. We make our way through the gift shop and see large signs on the wall pointing to exit, toilets, and…the first piano! We’d heard this was also a music museum, so perhaps now we’ll get to see that portion. We walk to the end of a hallway and arrows point upstairs, We walk up four flights of stairs and find a few rooms full of religious art. Much like that in the Uffizi. But where’s the first piano? We finally give up the search and head for the stairs. But then I’m adamant we find it, since we did climb all those stairs (yes I realize I’m lame and out of shape), so I ask the docent there, where is the piano? She speaks Italian and gestures to this space. I understand that this is all there is to the museum. Hmmm…

So we go downstairs, stumped as to why we couldn’t find the first piano. We stand in the hallway, looking at the large sign clearly saying there’s a first piano when we also see that this is in Italian “al primo piano” next to the English words “to the first floor”. Yeah, piano means floor.  We’re idiots.

Laughing at ourselves we walk through the gift shop and look for the exit. Every door says emergency exit! Even the door we came in doesn’t allow exit. How do we get out of here?! Then we realize it’s all the way back by the first piano signs. Wow. We are not paying adequate attention to things.

On our way back to the gift shop, we take a Pisa-inspired photo. Genius. So we finally escape the Accademia and walk back to the center of town.

We walk back over to the Duomo to walk up to the Cupola. Again, there’s a 1 hour 30 minute wait in line, but we go straight to the door and are the first people let in with the next group. Amazing! We enter the church (that I wasn’t allowed to enter because of my shoulders showing) on our way to the staircase up. It’s perfect! I get a great view of the church from here.

We walk up. And up. And up. Until we get to the bottom of the dome. We can see the incredible ceiling really well from here. Then we keep going up. Some people coming down the stairs let us know there’s a lot more to go and it gets crazy. What?! They are right. We walk up strange, narrow and steep staircases. It feels a lot like climbing through caves actually.

We finally get to the top of a ladder, and we are outside, on top of the dome! It’s incredible. We linger awhile to fully enjoy it. When we decide to head back down, we have to stand at the top of the ladder as at least 50 people come up. As it gets more crowded up top, I am more anxious to get down.

On the way down, we get to walk around the inside of the dome higher up than before. The beginning of the frescoes are right in front of us!

It’s only 5:30pm, and it’s been an incredible, full day in Florence. Now we want to go home and grill out. Stefan bought a temp grill and a ton of meat.

MEANWHILE, THE KIDS ARE WITH GRANDPA. HERE’S HIS ACCOUNT:

We convinced Stefan and Kimberly to go to Florence today without us.  I don’t think that we could ever get enough of Florence, but the crowds are just to intimidating with the grandkids.  Besides there is a relatively expensive “Firenze Card” that they can buy to let them go to the front of the lines.

Instead Debbie, Lillian, Olaf and I head down to Siena which is a little closer than Florence.  We park just outside of the town center, strap on the kids helmets, grab their scooters and head up the hill.  Without Kimberly there to make sure that we are seeing everything of significance we wander around pretty aimlessly. 

We are fortunate enough to come across some playground equipment and ride the horses like crazy.

Lillian is starving and it looks like rain so we duck into an open front pizza place and get the table right next to the street.  By the time that we sit down the skies open and a deluge comes down just feet from where we are sitting.  It’s fun to sit and watch the people running through the rain. 

We order dolce (dessert) just so we can sit at our table a little longer and let The rain finish.  Setting off again we go looking for the Piaza di Campo.  The plaza may have been a mistake because all around it has turned to sticky red mud.  Our shoes and scooters are a pretty big mess by the time we get out of there.

Now we are kind of ready to go, but I am turned around and not sure where we parked.  We take in more sites as we wander around trying to find the car.  The architecture is amazing, but even better is the vendor selling flags.  Olaf has to have a flag which means that Lillian must also have a flag.  With flags in hand we go scooter down the cobblestone streets when all at once the skies open up again.  Debbie points out a nearby large pavilion and we all run under its protection.  The rain is pouring down, but under the pavilion Olaf is flying around on his scooter.  I take the time to gather my bearings and when the rain lets up, we head off to the car.

The drive back is full of laughter and discussion of the water balloon fight that we are going to have when we get back to the house.  Olaf falls asleep in his car seat and I somehow end up sitting with him in a parking lot while Grandma and Lillian shop for clothes.  I really can’t explain how that happened.  It just did.

When the girls are done we head on home and the water balloon fight begins.  As fast as I can fill balloons the kids are throwing them at me.  At me!  I throw one at Olaf and apparently broke his heart that Grandpa could do something so vicious.  So no more throwing water balloons at Olaf.

We did not get to see the David like Stefan and Kimberly, but we did get to see the Lillian and Olaf.  A perfect day.

CONTINUING MY ACCOUNT WHEN WE GET HOME:

Oly runs screaming when he sees us pull up. I think some time away from each other can be healthy, to remind us how much we appreciate being together.

My mom has already prepared the table outside for dinner, and Stefan starts the temp grill. I make an awesome cheese plate and charcuterie plate, and we all sit outside with a glass of champagne (brought by us from Champagne). The weather and scenery are beautiful. These are the moments I imagined when I booked this place.