Sun & Surf

We hit the beach and make a day of it!   Tasty waves & beautiful sun!

 

Afterwards, we head out for dinner at a beach restaurant…

The girls run around on the beach & breakwater...

Beautiful sunset tonight :)

Cinque Terre (Ahhh!)

We take the train from Florence.  Not surprisingly, the train station is thick with fairly aggressive gypsies.  Maybe we shouldn't have enlightened the girls about them because it freaks them out quite a bit.  In the end, we feel it's part of learning about the world and the many cultures and people in it.  The Yin has to have a Yang or it all doesn't work.  They get almost 100% Yin in Barrington, so it's really great to expand their minds.  We board the train with all our wallets & purses ;)   It takes about 3 hours to get to Monterosso and we switch trains three times.  It all goes well and we catch a few naps along the way.

We arrive in Monterosso and we are told it had rained all day.  Thankfully, the weather has moved out by the time we arrive and it is dry the rest of the day.   We roll our bags across town to find our  apartment.

We get pretty excited the second we lay eyes on the beaches.  Four of the five towns making up the Cinque Terre have active harbors and are very much fishing villages.

Cinque Terre means, "Five Lands."  This stretch of the rugged, northern Italian Riveria is made up of five towns: Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarolo & Riomaggiore, each with their own personality and ambiance.  These villages cling to the dramatic, rocky cliffs and spill down to the sea.  Breathtaking!  You can't drive a car to these villages or from town to town but there's a train that runs regularly (sort of) to travel among them.  

There's no commercial development and it's thoroughly charming.  We are staying in Monterosso for a week.

The girls immediately put their toes in the water when we see the beach.

We, too, will be stretched out on a towel very soon….

We find our apartment & are greeted by another set of gracious and welcoming hosts.   This is our front yard.  We have a nice little outdoor table and beautiful flowering plants.  Our apartment is in the center of town, with shops and cafes nearby, but enough down a side street to be quiet in the mornings & nights.

The best plant in the yard is the huge lemon tree, full of enormous lemons!

   Our hosts encourage us to pick however many we want and to use the ladder, if needed!  Bonanza!!!

The girls immediately work on a plan to make fresh squeezed lemonade.

We go through the tunnel to check out the main beach area.  

Wow!  This is a beautiful place!

It's too late in the day to get our swimsuits on, so we stroll & hunt for a spot for dinner.  We find it -  On the left, hanging over the beach with the blue & white umbrellas :)

Monterosso, to be continued….

Florence! Day 2 (cont'd)

After the Uffizi, we go back to the Duomo.  Brunelleschi's double-shell dome kick-started Renaissance architecture.   

Then we see the famous bronze doors of the Bapistry.  Michelangelo was so moved by the gilded panels, he said they would, "grace the very gates of Paradise," and the name stuck.

Our self-guided walking tour takes us to the oldest building in Florence.  This tower dates from the ninth century, Torre Biazntina della Pagliuzza.

Quinn decides she wants to climb to the top of the Campanile, the bell tower for the Cathedral.  There are no other takers, so she & mom buy tickets & start climbing.  We will meet up with the other 3 at San Lorenzo Market.

We have no idea what we're in for at this point.

This is about 2/3 up, and I'm good.

Nice views, what more do we need?  It's a hot day, after all.

Nope, the little tiger is not satisfied.  So we climb the last 1/3.  The stairs get really narrow.  Good thing Quinn did not inherit the fear of heights and claustrophobia :)

We did it!

Quinn insists on a picture of the spire on top, "to prove we climbed all the way up."

Tiger on top

We meet up with the rest of the fam and Avery managed to score a new pair of shades.  We grab our roller bags & head to the train station.  Heading to Cinque Terre!  She's gonna need those shades!!!

Can't wait for the week of "vacation from our vacation!"  To The Beach!!!

Uffizi

Our 2^nd day in Florence, YAY!  We LOVE it here.

  We walk into the Uffizi at 9:00 a.m.  

The building itself is so gorgeous, let alone what it contains!   Floor to ceiling windows run the length of the halls, flooding them with natural light.  Beautiful.  

                                                                   Statues line the halls. 

The ceilings of the wide, marble hallways are entirely frescoed between beautiful wood beams. 

We start making our way through the rooms off the hallways.

We take in a little Leonardo Da Vinci...

A little Caravaggio...

Here's, a portrait of "Bacchus."  Our audio guide suggested that if Caravaggio didn't like you, he might do something like paint you drunk with rotten fruit...

But the faces he painted were captivating...

A little Raphael…

"Pope Leo X"

"Madonna of the Goldfinch"  The kids liked the cute story in this one.

The girls loved this little guy holding the goldfinch.  He was later made a Cardinal but then died at age 19.

A little Rubens…

A little Michelangelo...

A lot of Botticelli...

The mythological story depicted in this painting, "Primavera," is so interesting. 

"The Birth of Venus" painted in 1486

We start paying attention to detail.  It's a lot of fun for the girls to find the hidden images in the pictures.  Here are a couple of examples we spotted…

Full painting…nice family pic

But look more closely…

yikes!

Andrea del Sarto did this beautiful 1517 painting, "Madonna of the Harpies"...

Whoa - there are spooky bird people on the pedestal!

There were also Titian's and Tintoretto's... and we pushed our feet beyond where they wanted to go but it was wonderful. 

We have lunch on the Uffizi's terrace with a fantastic view.  The upper levels of the Palazzo Vecchio & the duomo are right on top of us.  We read that the Medici’s would hang out here & listen to the street music below.  Hey! That's kind of like our 5^th floor walk-up (hee hee)!!!  

The view from the "Cafeteria"

The view of the Ponte Vecchio from the Uffizi is also great. 

What a place – those Medici’s had some great real estate!  Location, location, location!