Our last day in Florence was a little hectic. We saw Dante's and Michelangelo's homes from the outside. Dante's was neat but Michelangelo's was not. Then we went to Pitti Palace which was very interesting, but because we had a time limit, was also a little frustrating. It is Humongous!! And the Gardens are extensive. It would probably take about 1/2 hour to walk from end to end.
One thing of interest to me is that the Medici Family (pronounced MEH dah chee) had a special walkway built from Pitti Palace, across the Ponte Vecchio bridge, all the way to the Uffizzi, which means office in Italian. It was closed in and totally decorated and therefore if the crowds were a little restless or the weather not so nice, they could still have a lovely commute to work!
At noon, we rented our car and headed into the Tuscany countryside. It was quite gorgeous. Anne drove us out of Florence and to our town of San Gimignano. I thought she was extremely brave. We decided she should drive since she had the most recent experience with a stick shift. It had only been about 13 years for her vs. my 20 years! However, the driving of a manual car came back easily to us both.
I swear that Anne actually glowed as we got further away from the city and into the beautiful area of Tuscany. She was have *a lot* of fun with the stick shift and I think I see a red ferrari in her future! She was also quite amazed with what good gas mileage looks like! LOL!!!!
The town of San Gimignano is incredibly cute. We all gave it 10's on our rating scale. We are having fun rating each site and city and experience.
San Gimignano is one of the "hill towns" that are sprinkled all over this area. They are towns built on top of mountain tops with city walls around them. Each was basically its own country or city-state. San Gimignano ticked off bigger Florence and Florence basically assumed it and moved the trade routs away from this town, to decrease their wealth and power. This left the towns in a time warp from the 14th century and are part of the reason they are such popular tourist destinations today.
We enjoyed exploring the town and the beautiful grotto that is in the old fortress. We decided to splurge a bit and had a nice dinner out. It was delicious.
Here in San Gimignano, we are staying in a monastery. Kayla really wanted to stay in a monastery here in Italy, so this was our chance. We were checked in by Mother Superior who spoke Italian and French, but no English. I could not for the life of me think of how to talk in French. I think I have suppressed it so much in order to learn Spanish and to not get the two languages confused, that it is tightly locked up. We had a small problem with the bill that we eventually figured out (she was not taking the deposit into account) and made it to our rooms.
Kayla says it is a good monastery experience as the beds are very hard. We did experience a miracle there though. We witnessed another Great Flood. Actually it was a loose shower head combined with amazingly strong water pressure that allowed the spray to soak the bathroom not once, but twice! I dubbed it the Great Flood as not only were the walls sink, toilet, towels, cosmetics, etc., soaked, there was a huge flowing puddle of water flowing from the bathroom into the bedroom. With many towels though, we were able to divert total disaster.
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