Florence

Florence's Duomo--perhaps one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. The exterior is done with three colors of marble--pink, green and white. The coloring and details are beautiful.

Centuries ago, Florence held a contest to decorate the East doors of its baptistry. You can see why Ghiberti and his bronze doors took the prize. Each square depicts a scene or story from the Old Testament. And there are figures carved in relief that separate the panels. We literally spent an hour just looking at everything. Little known fact: Thane actually got a perfect grade on a humanities paper he did on these doors.

After climbing approximately 300 steep and winding stairs through the bowels of the Duomo, you're treated with a 360 degree panoramic of Florence. One word: Wow.

Thane and Annie atop the Duomo. I don't know about you, but Thane's face looks a little flush.

Like you need any introduction here. "You scream, I scream. We all scream for gelato!" Hmm, that doesn't really work. Neither did Annie's claim that she was getting her "three a day" of fruit by eating multiple serving of gelato. Nice try, Annie.

Thane and Annie at a park overlooking the city.


In case you forgot what we look like, here's us at a bridge.


Funny story. We ran into these two Spaniards in line for the Uffizzi gallery. We struck up a conversation in Italian, and broken English and Spanish (Spanglianish?) Then, the next day we saw them in line for another museum. Then the next day we saw them at the train station. All unplanned of course. They were fun and both nurses like Annie. Thane felt very safe with them.