Florence

For Emily, lover of Florence, my BFF and one of my favorite travel buddies of all time. Let's come back here together when our kids are all grown up and we aren't up to our chins in little boys.
We haven't gotten to see as much in Florence I would like. We still hope to maybe see part of the Cathedral tomorrow (the free part) but even with advanced tickets, people were in line for forever to get in. Not so family friendly.
I had no idea how touristy is here. Everyone was very pushy and approached us trying to sell us things. I hear more Americans on the street than I do Italian. It is Florence's number one industry and Americans are the number one foreign visitors (just like in France, people speak to Curtis in English but they all speak to me in Italian or French- I blend, he doesn't.  He says we are going to Sweden next time and I will stick out like a sore thumb). DaVinci, Michelangelo, Galileo all lived here and Florence is also the birth place of the Opera. They truly have a very rich artistic history and it seems to be the major financial asset for the residents.
We walked up the biggest hill ever and had beautiful views of Florence and we had a picnic (Italians stink and bread making and their markets were full of dried pasta and olive oil, not bread and butter. We are so French now. We were totally annoyed about the lack of bread). Curtis earned his keep by carrying abe up the 827373 stairs in the stroller and even offered Myer a ride. I told him he was as good looking at the David and he should pose in front of it for me and he was completely annoyed to do it but he did it anyway cause he loves me, although he doesn't know why sometimes.
The view was beautiful and the funniest thing happened. An older Japanese couple were taking each other's pictures in front of the view so I offered to take one of them together (I did a bang up job, got the Cathedral centered next to them, zoomed it, etc) and they thanked me and left and then came back and the wife asked for a picture with us!! Haha! I said "ok, sure!" Curtis got a huge kick out of it (cause I took about 40 people's picture for them, so much that Curtis said he took my picture when I was doing it because I did it for so many people he thought it was a memorable part of Florence) and said my Okie kindness is that notable. The wife clapped and squealed to pose with us and she didn't do that when she posed with Florence on the background. He gives me a hard time about being an Okie but he knows in his heart that we are the best people in the world, obviously.
I am tired of the cramped, crowded cities with the kids in tow and so we tried to go back to the farm and it was booked for the weekend!! I seriously teared up. But we are going Monday til Wednesday and then driving the long 8 hours back to Toulouse. It was super hard to find a place for the weekend that wasn't already booked with one day notice. We have a place by the beach for Saturday and Sunday that we can't drive a car to and may or may not have an ant problem. We will see how it goes. We will stop at Piza on the way there.
The Cathedral is the place we go eat gelato every night. Don't worry, I didn't have any so I didnt barf on any historic churches today. Curtis and I try to take pictures of just us sometimes and pretend we are here on our honeymoon (we went to Arkansas for 2 nights on our real honeymoon) with varying success. Abe was sitting on the sidewalk crying and Beckett got in the picture with us.
Even with a kids crying facedown on a sidewalk in Florence and having to watch everyone eat gelato in front of me, still way better than Marseille!