Firenze

So one of the luxuries of living in Europe is the opportunity to travel.  About a month ago (yes, I'm a little behind in my blogging...) I went on a girls' weekend to Florence.  Yes, Italy.  I went to Italy for the weekend.  I am so spoiled!  There were seven of us on the trip, and we had so much fun.  We shopped, ate, drank, and then repeated.  It was fantastic!  Here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip.

Here's the whole group.  Eating... and drinking.  Wow, two parts down already!

Ummm... I think that's more eating.  Mmmm.  Gelato.

Shopping.  See I told you.

The markets were quite impressive.  Not quite as chaotic as Korea (or China)... but what is?!  I will say, I thought the quality of merchandise was much better than in Korea... although you could still get your fake purses.  You would all be proud of me.  I did not acquire a single purse.  Nope, I think I'm good for quite some time!

It's supposed to be good luck to touch this pig's nose at one of the markets... not sure who for.  The buyer or the seller!

The food market.  Yummy.  I drooled at the produce, pasta, cheese, and wine for quite some time.  If only I was allowed more than 15 kg checked baggage!  Hey, I'm not the pasta princess for nothing, it comes naturally!

Um, I think that would be eating again.  Mmmm.  More gelato.  In three days I had three bowls of gelato and I think six cappuccinos.  Sounds about right, doesn't it?

In the middle of all that eating, drinking, and shopping we did manage to do some sightseeing as well.  Here are a friend and I outside of Duomo, the large cathedral church in Florence.

More Duomo pictures.  (I totally can't take credit for these photos, another friend took them with her nice camera...)

Two of us climbed to the top of the dome.  It was quite the climb, but the views of the inside of the dome, and the view of the city from above made the climb (and the height... yikes!) quite worth it.

We had beautiful weather, especially the last day, so we took a walk along the river.  This bridge is famous for the jewelry market that operates inside the bridge.  It was very cool.

Also on the last day a couple of us went to see the statue of David at one of the museums.  First of all, he is huge.  And ripped.  It was really amazing to think that he was just a chunk of marble, and that centuries ago a man with a few tools carved this amazing piece.  We were the first ones in the museum, so we had him all to ourselves for a few minutes.  It was incredible.  I'm not a huge art buff, but I was truly wowed.  But then, the coolest thing happened!

We were about to leave the museum and were in the gift shop looking for post cards when I heard this voice I recognized.  I looked up and it was L's dad!  My step-grandparents and aunt and uncle were there in the exact same museum as me, half way around the world!  I mean, how cool is that?  We both knew the others were in Italy, but didn't think there was any way we would run into each other.  I mean, Italy is a big country.  It was so cool that God allowed us to meet.  If we had been five minutes later, or them five minutes earlier, we would have missed each other.  So after causing quite a disturbance in the gift shop, we took a couple of pictures.  I said later that it was a good thing we didn't see each other in the actual museum.  We would have been kicked out we were all so excited!  It was so fun to get back home that night and call L to say, "Guess who I saw this morning?  Your parents, in Italy!"  How cool.  

Anyway, it was a great trip.  And it was nice to get a little break from the kids.  I said I really didn't care what we did as long as it did involve pasta and wine, and didn't involve chicken nuggets!  So I was good.