Day 62 : A night in Florence!! (July 15):

  Now we go back to Italy! We drive back through Croatia and Slovenia – they are very poor, but still every small town is complete with a church - to Florence, Italy (about 5 hours).

  We check into our hotel – it has two beds upstairs and a little kitchen and a bed downstairs. After we drop off our stuff, we drive to old town Florence. We pull off into a FULL parking lot (we hadn't really seen any crowds before we hit Italy), climb out of our car, and WOW! What a view! There are large domes, cathedrals, bright terracotta rooftops filling every space you look. There is even a cool bridge lined with buildings.

    So we drive down to old town, miraculously find parking in this packed city –which Benson is always amazing at – and eat pizza, spaghetti and calzones (of course=) at a fun little pizzeria restaurant. Our table is a wooden picnic bench and it is sitting right in front of a big glassless window right alongside the street, with crowds of tourists shuffling by. Tanner is asleep in his car seat, so we put him on the table in front of the big window and Dallin puts his hat upside down in front of him for people to put money in – maybe he will pay for our dinner. He was like a street performer! It was cute! Lots of people laugh, some take pictures, but no one puts money in – maybe he’s not as cute as we think – no, that can’t be it.

 We got some yummy Gelato ice cream. It’s like frosting, soooo good!  - Boy am I gonna’ miss this stuff!

 

 Tanner used to just stick out his tongue, but now he takes a sample spoon and digs into everybody's cone.

We walk around . . .

We stop in a cathedral to see an evening organ concert. . .

We buy some souvenirs. . .

 and see different street performers – a lady on roller skates, plays a violin. – Dallin thinks that street performers just take all of their talents and perform them all at once. What type of street performer would you be?

 We walk around the Duomo and the Baptistry – huge!

  

 Then we walked to a plaza that had a replica of David (David and Goliath). In the plaza, there was a concert going on. . .

 and men were selling these lighted helicopters that you fling high up to the sky with a rubber band and they spiral down. They wanted 1 Euro for each. We talked them down to a pack of 12 for 9 Euro! We all had a good time! I’m going to miss these plaza things the most!

    So we all stand around shooting off helicopters with music in the background and the temperature has perfectly cooled down.

 

 Tanner – crawls around like a wind up toy, releasing weeks of energy build up from hours of  car seat, back pack, and stroller buckles. He turns more black with each step he takes, but loves every minute of it. He waves to strangers and performs for cameras and video cameras that discover him. No care in the world.

 I am going to miss these evenings in the plaza!