Italy Day 3 and 4: Florence and Pisa

We've been to Florence a bunch of times, though not as many times as Brugges, this was our third time and Brian's fourth.  We keep coming back, one, because it's one of Brian's favorite cities and, two, because of Bernardo.

In front of San Miniato

Also, in front of San Miniato, but looking down on Florence

Brian in front of San Miniato

Bob, you'll never remember it, but look at the cool places you've been!

A sweet moment between sister and brother

Bernardo was a monk in this monastery when Brian first met him just a couple months before we got married in 2001.  

The girls and I met him in 2008, pregnant with Isaac, when I first went to Florence.  He showered us with gifts and made us feel so at home in San Miniato every evening after our full day of sight-seeing when we'd make the trek up to the top with a double stroller, Brian have a fractured foot, and I was carrying an extra bundle.  He even drove us straight to the train station early the morning we left.  I've told this story before, but he called only moments after Isaac was born to say he'd been praying for me and the baby and wanted to know how we were.

In 2016, we returned to have Isaac's First Communion in this church and have Bernardo there since he'd played an important prayerful role in his birth.  

Bernardo, our favorite Abbott!

Then now in 2018, we came back once more to spend a few moments with our favorite Abbott.  He was the same as always, praying for us and showering us with gifts.  First we went in front of San Miniato's relics and lit candles and lined them up in front of the altar and prayed.  He took us up to the bell tower and we stood right there with the bells as they rung out the noon hour.  It was super loud and Bobby started to panic, but he quickly calmed down and just let me cover his ears and cuddle him.

Cuddling the scared Bobby during the bells

Then we went up to the next level, the very top, and he gave the children candies and chocolates while we talked and looked at Florence below us.  Before we left, he took us into the gift shop and gave us a cake made by the monks there and gave each of the children a small medal.

Loving the sunshine!

The cake

The Arno River with the Ponte Vecchio in the distance

View from on the Ponte Vecchio

We walked to lunch.  At lunch Judah fell asleep at the table after eating his PB&J we packed for him. Bobby dirtied his diaper and I found out that I forgot to reload the backpack with more diapers that morning.  I had exactly one wipe and no diapers.  This had happened once before when Isaac was a baby in Amsterdam, but I was able to clean him up and keep the same diaper on him.  However, when I got to the bathroom I realized this was not one of those lucky times.  Not only was it dirty, but it was already out of his diaper on his baby leggings.  I had to pull together a makeshift cloth diaper by folding the baby leggings up and then putting his pants on top.  We paid and I went searching for a place to buy some diapers while Brian and the kids looked at the statues outside the Uffizi.  Luckily, I found some Pampers before he made any further mess of the situation.

In front of the Uffizi museum

I put his fresh diaper on behind this statue.  ;)

We always stop in Santa Maria Novella Farmacia when we are in Florence.  It is a perfume store in an old monastery and was in a scene in Hannibal, the movie.  It is Brian's favorite smells in all the world and he always buys me a new perfume.  This time we came rather unprepared as to what the names of my perfumes that I already had were since the bottle's only label is etched into the bottle on the back and not something you notice unless you are really looking at the bottle.  We smelled probably 15 fragrances and narrowed it down to two.  One was Brian's favorite and one was my favorite.  I ended up choosing the one that Brian liked more because he's the one who really would be smelling it the most since I get used to the scents that I wear.  Anyway, it turned out that it was the same one we got the last time we went.  So now I have two big bottles (they only come in one size) of the same perfume.  On the bright side, it is truly Brian's favorite if we picked it out twice and now I have a nice long supply of it.

Santa Maria Novella Farmacia

Santa Maria Novella before catching the bus back to our van and heading back for the night.

That was our Monday, and the next morning we were scheduled to check out of our Agitourismo to drive down to Rome for the Wednesday audience with Pope Francis.  However, we didn't check our facts and just relied on someone else for the info and it turned out the Pope was in Chile that whole week and there was to be no audience.  We found out on Saturday and so we canceled our Rome reservations and just cut our trip short.  We've been to Rome many times and that was really the only reason for going even though we'd planned to visit with a couple of friends while there.  We found a couple of days on our calendar when we could fly down to Rome for a Wednesday audience and decided that was a better use of our money than going to Rome as planned and never getting to see the Pope before we move back to the states.

So the next morning we got up earlier and packed up the van.  We drove to Pisa to literally just see the tower of Pisa.  For some reason, this was very high on the kids' list of things to see in Italy and so we wanted to give them that experience.  Unfortunately, it was raining and the kids were tired, so it wasn't as fun as they'd hoped.  My little people have a thing against rain coats, hats, hoods. 

Isaac

Genevieve

Judah

Drew

"Yep, it's leaning."

And that is all I have to say about Pisa, except that there were so many people bothering us to buy stuff as we walked to the tower.  We grabbed McDonald's and hit the road for what was supposed to be 10.5 hours and turned into a lot more when they stopped traffic completely in the Swiss Alps outside the 10 mile tunnel because there had been a wind storm on the other side and some trees had fallen on the road.  We sat still for almost three hours.  We had just enough gas to get into Germany because we get cheaper gas in Germany.  Brian turned off the van, but was listening to his audio show.  The battery died and we got a jump from the car next to us, but we couldn't keep the van running long because of the gas situation and we had no idea how long this was going to be.  We charged it up for a while, but then we took the chance of turning off the van again, but this time not using the battery at all.  It started up fine when the traffic finally started moving.  For a long time we didn't know what was even going on, but Brian got out and talked to a couple of guys that were standing out in the snow and found out about the trees and that they thought it would be at least another hour at that point.  We got home at midnight, but we were happy to have made it and all went straight to  bed.  Bob had only slept for about 45 minutes of the car trip at around 10pm, so he was exhausted.