Pisa and Florence

Last week both of my kids had 3 days off from work, so we decided to take a whirlwind trip up north.  We hit Pisa, Florence, San Marino and Bologna in those three days.  It was crazy, but fun.

We flew into Pisa and headed straight over to the Leaning tower.

Sam was annoyed with all the people taking  pictures trying to hold up the tower.
She decided to take a picture of pushing it down.

 There is not a lot to see in Pisa.  We walked around a little.  There was this cute horse cart…..

 And of course the Duomo…….

After seeing Pisa, we got in the car and headed to Florence…….

The Duomo in Florence.  The picture doesn't really do it justice.
It was beautiful, and when we walked by later in the day it seemed to have changed colors.

 We walked around the city a little…..

And headed to the Ponte Vecchio Bridge…..

The bridge has all sorts of little shops on it.  Most of them are fabulous jewelry shops.  Unfortunately, I didn't plan enough in advance, so we were unable to hit any of the museums.  Tommy and I were hoping to go to the Uffizi Gallery.  We have both read Dan Brown's "Inferno" which takes place in Florence, and we wanted to see some things in Uffizi which are talked about in the book.  We had planned to walk around a little more, but a terrible thunder storm hit with strong rain.  We eventually took shelter in a coffee shop and got this little treat….

….it is a frozen coffee and it was delicious.  I can't even begin to describe it to you because the texture was like nothing I have ever had, but Sam want to do some experimenting to try and duplicate it.

Once the rain let up some, we headed back to our hotel.  One little perk at this hotel was a huge hot tub with a Swedish waterfall.  So while we didn't get to spend as much time in the city as we had planned, it was nice to relax in the hot tub, a luxury not often found in hotels in Europe.