In Florence, we stayed in one of the most beautiful Airbnb we have ever stayed in. It was centrally located and had small two garden patios. The host took his job very seriously and we provided bakery breakfast treats on two separate occasions, (Aiden is convinced he had a deal with the bakery)!
With three days in the beautiful city of Florence. We enjoyed exploring the old town, seeing the Cathedral Domo. Alastair and I enjoyed the walk up the hill to see the typical view of Florence at Sunset enjoying different lighting on the silhouette of the city and the views of the Arno River. The local interactive Da Vinci Museum was a ton of fun and great learning for all of us. It had models built on his drawings that showed how advanced his engineering skills were. Although they may look simple, they helped us all understand complex physics and motion. We were also exposed to Da Vinci’s artwork and his exploration of human anatomy. With a great explanation of what made are so unique, after learning more about the Mona Lisa, it gave me a greater appreciation to what we saw at the Louvre and why he is considered a genius. Although he was born in 1452 many of his inventions under lie much of today’s mechanics and machinery. It was truly an interactive museum, where you could touch everything and play with things, actively learning about the mechanism behind it and making our own creations with interesting pieces.
We visited the Academia Gallery of Florence to see Michaelangelo’s famous David Sculpture. We were surprised to find they also had an exhibition of historical Musical instruments. It was wonderful to see both kids get very excited about the instruments and speak about missing their music classes and school bands. Seeing an Amati Cello and a Stradivari Violin was exciting for Sophie and made her appreciate the U of S, Amati string instrument collection more. Aiden enjoyed seeing the clarinets evolution and old wood wins no longer in use, he was practicing his fingering as he wandered around the exhibit. The statue of David was immensely impressive, but also very crowded. The museum also houses many famous Catholic artwork pieces, very ornate and beautiful. We all commented on some of the similarities between things we had seen in Morocco, tiling, mosaics, and floral designs, and how they were also present in the Catholic architecture. While in Florence we elected not to go to the Uffizi Museum, as we all felt we had recently been to too many art galleries. Instead, we had a fantastic wander around the city, checking out interesting shops, street stalls, and playing a great game of rummy on a local patio. Aiden was thrilled to complete his mini figure LEGO collection for Dungeons and Dragons, something he has been working on for our entire trip.
