Florence

We had a full day in Florence today. We decided to do the hop-on, hop-off bus thing - neither of us felt like lining up for art galleries. So we got on the bus, went up to the open top, dried off our seats with kleenex, and sat down to enjoy the view and the commentery. We crossed the river, and drove through an absolutely beautiful area of cypress and villas and boulevards - unfortunately, it had begun to rain at that point. So I put up my hood, and we partially opened the umbrella to keep our knees and purses dry. This had the added advantage of blocking the cold wind. We carried on, up on the top of the double decker bus (the rain stopped after about 1/2 hour, but not the wind) until we got up in the hills above Florence to the village of Fiesole. I can see why everyone likes Tuscany.

As soon as we arrived in Fiesole Aidan and I went to warm up inside with a cappuchino and a chocolate and a croissant. (The croissant was a disappointment - just like the ones that the hotel put out for breakfast, it was stuffed with apricot jam. We prefer our croissants unadulterated.) The cappuchino and chocolate were great.
Then we went to the archeological museum, and saw the Etruscan and Roman artifacts that had been dug up. Then we went out and wandered around the Roman ampitheatre (still used - and not only by Aidan, but for concerts).

There was also a temple (part Etruscan, part Roman)

We left the Zona Archeologica and went for lunch (Aidan may not want either pizza or pasta for quite some time after returning home). Then we wondered around the town square for a bit, here is a photo looking down on Florence from Fiesole.

When we took the bus back down from the hills it was much warmer and not raining, but Aidan decided to sit inside to be sure we were warm. We got off our hop-on, hop-off tour near the Ponte Vecchio. It is a really cool bridge with jewellry shops all along both sides, except for in the middle where you can look out up and down the river. The jewellry shops are pretty high end, so we only window shopped.

We then wandered through Florence (actually, a very compact city so far as tourist sites go). We had a gelato in the Piazza Signora and looked at the line-up for the Uffizi gallery. We went through the Piazza della Republica. When we saw the carosel we decided to take a photo of a cute  kid on the carosel. The kids were all sullen or scared or bored. So we went the the photo of the friendly excited adult instead.

 As we walked back to the hotel we saw motorcycle parking, which Aidan thought merited another picture.

Note, our hotel is the building at the end of the street. After a brief stop in the hotel, we went out to the Market of San Lorenzo. I remembered Reche and Caileen enjoying the market when I was here with them, and Aidan greatly enjoyed it too. I forgot to take a photo of the market, but we had a good time there. Both of us purchased some mementos.
We stopped into a little restaurant on the way home - we shared a super bruschetta, then Aidan branched out and had risotto this time, and I had a gnocchi. The young waiter was very friendly and nice - we discussed languages (he speaks Albanian, Italian, English, French, German and Spanish, but he says by the 4th language, not very well.) He was impressed we were Canadian. He said Aidan is lucky to be 14, it's all downhill after 20 (I think he forgot how old grandma must be). And he gave Aidan a free desert, a panna cotta - which she greatly enjoyed. No cannoli today!