Florence- Day 3

Today was wonderful! I'm not even sure why it was so wonderful... But I loved today! We slept in and left for the bus around 11. When we got to the center of Florence, we went to the Medici Chapel. 

The Medici's were a very powerful and influential family in Florence. One of the Medici's hired Michelangelo to make statues over his relatives seplchres. I saw these statues in a Rick Steve's episode, and I couldn't wait to see the real ones up close!

Funny story... I asked this younger guy (maybe in his 20's or 30's) to take a picture of us. He seemed capable of taking a picture (sometimes if you ask older people they don't know how to work the camera on a cell phone). Anyways, this is the picture we got...

He took it so fast and we clearly weren't ready! The second we got up to the statues he was handing my phone back to me. This made us laugh! So the I asked an old person to take one and she took a much better picture of us...

Dawn and Dusk...

Day and Night...

Madonna and Child (middle sculpture) by Michelangelo... The other two are by different artists.

After the Medici Chapel we went to climb to the top of the Duomo! We met a couple from LA and it was fun to talk to them, they were so nice and gave us lots of helpful advice for our upcoming visit to Rome (they had just been there).

We climbed to the very top of this dome...

 You can also see the dome in this picture that I took a few nights ago...

Here we are at the top...

View of the bell tower...

More views...

After climbing the Duomo we went to lunch and visited a market that our LA friends told us about. We were SO glad we talked to them, because the food was so dang good and very inexpensive!

Real Italian right there folks...

After lunch we visited the market. It was so fun! Jaren got himself a leather jacket, I could tell he really wanted it! It will last him forever and I know he has wanted one since we've been married. He told me I could get one too but there weren't really any that I liked. I did get me this gold bracelet though. You have to be a good bargainer at the market and try to talk the price down.

My gold bracelet...

Jaren's leather jacket... (He's doing a "cool guy" pose.) I think he looks SO good in it! Woo! Dang! Mmm...

Afterward we saw inside the Baptistry and the Duomo. The Duomo Museum is closed for restoration until the end of October so we decided to climb the bell tower! (Lots of climbing today!)

Inside the Baptistry...

Inside the Duomo...

Climbing the Bell Tower...

View of the Duomo from the top of the Bell Tower...

More views...

On the way back down...

Then we decided to go home and rest for a bit. We wanted to go to the Piazzale Michelangelo again at night to watch the sunset again!

Nighttime is my favorite and tonight was especially fun. The weather was perfect- not hot or cold! We went to Piazzale Michelangelo again and then just walked around Florence. The streets weren't crowded and there were musicians all over! I'm going to miss this beautiful city. We sure had a great time here!

Our beautiful view tonight...

Jaren thought this would make a good picture...

This guy was from the USA! He played the banjo and his puppets danced (he had several puppets and would switch them out)...

More musicians...

And even more musicians...

This was an entrance to a store and it was nuts! You press the button on the door and it plays a techno version of "Over the Rainbow" while flashing my little ponies (or whatever they are). It was so strange!...