The Minches: Brandon and Kristin in Florence

Hi again!
So our next stop in Italy was Florence. We took a 1 hour train ride to Florence in the morning and once we arrived we knew this was our favorite stop. Florence is the Italy we imagined...GREAT food, great art and great wine! We loved it in Florence and plan to go back some day with our family.

Here is the Indepedence Square in Florence. At night, that carrousel was lit up and it was beautiful.

This statue was with a group of 10 statues outside of the Uffizi gallery, the most famous art gallery in Italy. This was my favorite statue.

Here I am...loving that we are about to go get some gelato!

Brandon and I outside of the Duomo. It is the third largest cathedral in the world!

Just a street view in Florence. The side streets were so fun to roam around in (or get lost in!). We wandered around all day and night just stumbling upon great restaurants and fun people.

Brandon outside of a piazza with the bell tower in the background.

Here is a better shot of the Duomo. It was beautiful on the outside. It was pink, green and white with a red roof. The detail on it was incredible.

Here is a shot of the detail work...amazing.

Here I am at our favorite restaurant! Trattoria ZaZa...best Italian food I have ever had. The wine was amazing and was cheaper than water! So we drank a few bottles of it :)

Duomo at night right outside of a cafe.

MMM...gelato! My favorite treat. I honestly had over 15 gelatos on this trip. I went about twice a day. We tried to get a close up to show how beautiful they make them...but they taste even better.

Here are all the gelatos to chose from. I had the Nutella kind here...

We went to the Florence market and watched a man make homemade pasta. He was making tortellini and lasagna noodles this day. He made the dough, put it in this stretching machine and the moved it to this machine where it made tortellinis!

One day, we took a trip to Fiesole, a small town outside of Florence. It over looks the city of Florence and had great views. The pictures of the views didn't come out as well as this one but we got to see all of Florence from this spot!

Here Brandon is trying to read an Italian menu in Fiesole :). In most of the cities we went to, they spoke some English, but in Fiesole they didn't speak any English! We ended up getting a great pasta dish with some meat...I am hoping it was beef but I am a bit nervous! It tasted so good regardless :)

We crossed over the Arno river and took this on the bridge. The South side of Florence isn't as beautiful as the north. But walking over this bridge was fun because there were hundreds of jewelers with gold and diamonds!