Another four hours in the car with five family members of three generations:) I think it went well! This was the day we headed into Italy for the "Area SerVICio's" (proclaimed loudly, with hand gestures.
We previously visited Italy with Corinne and Steven and had a blast yelling Italian phrases at the top of our voices while tooling down the highway. This trip, we stopped for our "pea sized bladder" passenger, who shall remain nameless, about every hour. But these road side stops are NOTHING like the truck stops in America. They are nice, they are clean, they have gourmet meats and cheeses and wine, and they are filled with lots of candy. Kelsey found "Crispy M&M's" in the blue package that haven't been sold in the US since the 90's.
We found our beloved Paprika flavored Pringles again and ate them non stop on the road. But we also had a sizable collection of bread, meats, cheeses and fruits from Lugano to make on the go sandwiches. Mustard in a tube, some lovely sliced raclette cheese and salami and Parma. Which is ham. Cappucinnos whenever the driver ran out of steam. We ate our way through Europe, but then if you've seen the pics, you would know that it's our thing:)
Driving into Florence, the hills gradually show up, you see the cypress and other trees on the hillsides, and the lovely, pastoral orchards and vineyards. Sheep now, not cows. We were most definitely in Tuscany now, knocking another one off of my mom's bucket list. I found the Andrea Bocelli and we listened to some opera while driving through Tuscany. *sigh*
Then we took another of our wrong turns (thank you GPS app that did NOT keep up with new construction). We actually had waited 30 minutes in the Italian Area Servicio with free but slow wifi to download this app. So we ended up on a high mountainside in a quaint little village. If there'd been a hotel, we were close enough to Florence that I would have said, "let's book a room for tonight!" Instead we hopped back on the highway and passed Florence up to stay in a town known for it's textiles. They had a textile museum even. We got in just before dark though and chose to eat in the hotel. Great wifi, a fabulous front desk manager, and the meal was actually quite good.
We always looked for WIFI and free parking. Those are mandatory when you're driving through Europe, which meant we were frequently 30 minutes outside of the major towns.
The next morning we were off to Florence to see David. We were scared. Last year when Richard and I went, we didn't find any of the "large, easy to read Parking signs" that Rick Steves had said to look for. Florence has an old historic town center that you can't drive through. It's a €100 fine each time you do this. We had done it approximately four times last year.
This is where the famous David statue by Michaelangelo is located. We went to Rick Steves trusty Florence guide again and this time we parked at his recommended pay parking lot which had an actual address, which was NOT full, as advertised! Then we all caught a taxi to the town center and back.
Richard was kind enough to stand in the LONG line for us (almost 1.5 hours) to get tickets to see David while the four of us took off in two groups to go shop. For Italian leather:) Someone in Oxford, MS got a very nice purse from her daughter and my mom got her first taste of real Italian Gelato.
We whipped through the museum, saw David, which was as amazing as you can imagine, and immediately set out to our next stop, Venice.
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