Day 10- Florence

 Today we took the train into Florence to explore. It's about 1h 20 min on the regional train

We arrived at the station, and went to the Piazza Santa Maria Novella for a snack. Oscar loved chasing around the pigeons, and the pigeons loved all of the crumbs that our snack left behind.

Next, we headed over to the Duomo. We had to stand in line, but not for very long. 

We went inside the cathedral, but didn't climb the bell tower or the dome.

Then, we walked over to Ponte Vecchio.

The kids were fascinated by all of the jewelry stores, but I'm not sure they really understood that it's strange to have stores on a bridge.

Everyone was dreaming of pizza for lunch, so we stopped in to a restaurant for pizza and calzone. Luckily, the bulk of the rain came down while we were inside eating.

After lunch, we went to the Museo del Palacio Vecchio. It's a bit tricky to keep the kids attention in a museum like that, but the intricate paintings on the ceiling were a hit.

As a reward for not screaming (too much) in the museum, we got some gelato and walked along the Arno river.

Penny doesn't like the gelato much, but she loves the cones.

We walked along the river for about 20 minutes, to a parco giochi right on the river.

The kids enjoyed playing on the ship. They had some sort of elaborate fishing game going and were cooperating pretty well.

Then it was a sunset walk back to the train station to head back to Lucca.

The kids did amazingly well on such a busy sightseeing day. Penny and Oscar both had on-the-go naps, and I put in over 17000 steps, Jasper and Ellis walked just as far (though probably more steps from little legs).

Hopefully everyone sleeps well tonight!