Firenze, Italy (Florence)

As Joe slaved away at work I took my parents to Florence Italy for a couple days. What can I say about Florence…there is lots of shopping to be done and it has wonderful art!!!

One day we ventured to the main train station of Florence or the real name is Firenze. We bought our round trip ticket to Pisa and off we were. The train however don’t announce the stops so you have to pay attention or ask the people around you when you arrive in Pisa. (That is unless you want to end up at another town)

This is the only thing my mom wanted to do on the trip, was to see the famous “leaning tower”




The next day we were at museums…


I have always dreamed of seeing my man David and he did not disappoint me. However you can’t take photos in the Galleria dell’ Accademia.. I found this photos of David from Getty Images and need to share them with you.


Next stop was the Galleria Degli Uffizi famous for the painting birth of venus and many others.

I do a lot of research for our trips making sure we get all the important sites in and this next one was not in any of my books. I found it purely by accident buying postcards for some of you. I actually bought a postcard of this bronze pig to show the girls at the hotel and ask what this is….

Il Porcellino (Italian "piglet") is the local Florentine name for the bronze fountain of a boar Il Cinghiale in the Mercato Nuovo in Florence, Italy. The fountain figure was sculpted and cast by Baroque master Pietro Tacca (1577 –1640) in 1612, following a marble Italian copy of a Hellenistic marble original, at the time in the Grand Ducal collections of the Uffizi, but which has since been lost or destroyed. Visitors to Il Porcellino toss a coin into the grating at the boar's feet and rub the boar's snout to ensure a return to Firenze, a tradition that has kept the snout in a state of polished sheen while the rest of the boar's body has patinated to a dull brownish-green. Copies of the sculpture can be found around the world.


Needless to say I did rub his snout and put coins in…any thing to get a return trip to Italy is o.k. by me. (rember I threw my coins into Trevi Fountain in Roma too – who would not want to keep going to italy???) Not to mention this was my 3rd trip to Italy in 4 months.



Just like that our trip was over and I had very happy but frozen parents to take back to Brussels…stay tuned for our next adventour Normandy then Paris for New Year Eve.