Tuesday March 22 and Wednesday March 23, 2011

I keep meaning to blog everyday, but these last few days it just isn't happening! Sorry! So, let me see...what's been happening.

Well, look at Hannah's flowers.

They have opened up and are soooo gorgeous!!!

I don't have many pictures from the last couple of days. John and Dianne were quite tired from their trip to Rome. We had planned their "attack", but when they got there the Rome Marathon was on, and it kind of put a big kink in the plans that we had made. They stayed by the Colisseum like we did, so we thought it would be great for them to see that first when they got there because it's so close, but that's where the finish line for the marathon was so they couldn't get anywhere near it!

Unfortunately, that meant that streets were closed and traffic was in a snarl, too. That meant that John and Dianne walked most of Sunday around Rome, and then had to cram in a bunch of stuff on Monday, so they were exhausted when they got back to Florence.

Anyway, we all had a nice, lazy Tuesday morning. For lunch, John and Dianne took us to a little place that they found on one of their first days here, and then we split up - boys and girls. The girls went to look at a few shoe stores, and Grace and Katie wanted to show Grandma their new favourite store, Monna Lisa. The boys went to look at Foot Locker (yes, that Foot Locker) because Liam saw some funky runners that he liked.

Awhile back, Abby got a Hello Kitty stuffie, and I had seen a white tiger stuffie at the dollar store, but when Hannah and I went back, it was gone, so I've been telling her for a week and a half that we'd go to the Disney Store (I know. We come to Florence to go to the Disney Store, but we've looked at everything else that might have a stuffed animal!) so today, we did that. She didn't see anything she really wanted, so we ended up meeting up with the boys and after a quick turn on the merry-go-round, went for gelato.

Daddy and Papa took the kids home and Grandma and I walked over to the street market near the San Lorenzo church to sheck out some of the leather goods. We were pretty tired after that, so we had dinner in.


Today, Papa and Grandma very graciously took the kids while Chris and I had a day to ourselves. We stopped for coffee while Chris had a quick phone call for work, and then walked to the Ponte Vecchio - Chris wanted to see the jewelery shops when they were open. We walked for a bit on the Altrarno side of the river, then up the fancy schmancy shopping street to do some window shopping. We stopped for lunch at a mozzarella bar.

There should be more mozzarella bars in the world.

We had their tasting menu and got to try 3 different kinds of buffalo mozzarella dn 2 different kinds of ricotta cheese, as well as some artisinal salamis. We slowly meandered back to the apartment, peeking in stores along the way. It was (is!) 20 degrees today, so we had a lovely, relaxing, sunny day! Thanks, John and Dianne!!!

Another view of the Ponte Vecchio from this little side alley that Chris and I found today.

So serious!

John and Dianne took the kids for lunch, and then to the Da Vinci museum here in Florence. It had some of his paintings and some reproductions and some recreations of his inventions. So, since I wasn't there, I'm going to have the kids guest blog to tell you about it!

Katie says: We saw some of Leonardo da Vinci's very cool experiments like um, the first airplane, the giant crossbow. My favourite part was a copy of  "The Last Supper". It was carved out of wood and looked like it was popping out of the picture.

Abby says: We saw a cannonball at the museum. My favourite part was seeing the cannon.
The big crossbow was pretty scary.

Hannah: We saw a water digger and a robot that was a deer that had tiger teeth and tiger claws at the front. It was a carving. (he was trying to figure out how to make robots explains Katie - a robot of a deer mixed with a tiger) My favourite part was the water digger.

Grace says: I really liked all the gears and how you could touch them and make them move. If you think about it, a lot of his inventions are similar to things that we use today.

Liam says: It was awesome! My favourite room was of a whole bunch of gears and you got to work the. They had a big wooden ball bearing contraption thing. There was a mini first excavator. There was this one room that was an octagon of mirrors. If you looked at one mirror, you could see all the sides of the object standing in the centre. It was really, really cool!