Florence

We ventured into Florence twice during our stay in Tuscany.  One reason we chose Fattoria Lavacchio to be our farmstay was its proximity to Florence. On our first day, we went and worshipped with a local church. The church we visited was Mosaico church....Here....It was a blessed, albeit hot (think no AC 98 degrees outside and lots of people in a small room) experience.  To worship with believers whom I perceive to have been descended from every continent on the globe was a wonderful experience.

After church we visited Piazzale Michelangelo for spectacular views over the city (above pics).

This is a replica statue of David in the Piazzale (below)
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We ate lunch at this really neat Trattoria  Trattoria Za Za near Piazza del mercato centrale.  Can I make a suggestion?  If you ever eat there, try the truffled spaghetti carbonara!  It was my favorite pasta dish I had during all our time in Italy.  However, I will say we are family divided concerning truffles.  Coleman and I loved it and that truffle flavor!  Charlie and Callie did not like it at all.  Natalie and Abbie liked it a little bit.  I may have mentioned this in another post, but here are 2 tips on feeding a family on an overseas trip.  Tip number one is try and eat out only once per day.  Obviously the only way to do this is if you have booked apartments/airbnbs that have kitchens.  We had a full kitchen in our farm stay, and we utilized it. Tip number 2 is to eat "family style"  When we are in the U.S. and go out to eat, we typically have every child order their own entree/kid meal.  Overseas we ordered typically 3 or 4 different dishes and maybe a side item or two.  We split everything.  Not only did it save us money, but we also got to try a bigger variety of dishes. This was a helpful method since we did not know which pastas/dishes our kids would like the most.
Here is another David replica.  We saw both of the David replicas but we did not make it to see the original.  Had we not been traveling with all 4 of our kids, I'm sure seeing the original would have been something we would have pursued.  Time and money are limited and you have to make tough decisions!

We visited the ponte vecchio bridge.  This bridge has stood over the Arno river since approximately mid 1300s.  There are many merchant shops on the bridge.

The next few pictures are from the outside and interior dome of the cathedral in Florence.  The official name is the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.  The cathedral is beautiful.  We did not plan the best here as we arrived at the most crowded time of day.  Midmorning the line gets very long.  I stood in line for over an hour to "hold our place" while Charlie and the kids window shopped.  By the time we got inside, we had to hurry through in order to make our lunch reservations.  I was thankful even for a short time in the cathedral. The interior of the dome is a large fresco entitled "The last judgement"

We made it to our lunch spot.  It was our first pizza in Italy.  It did not disappoint.  It was very good napoli style pizza.  We all thought it was cool that they gave us scissors to cut the slices with.  Our "go to" pizzas while in Italy were the Margarita and the Margarita doc pizzas.