Don’t Just Exist, Live
- Charlotte Martin
- Mar 12
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 14
On Tuesday morning, we all woke up and got ready to see the world’s most famous sculpture at the Accademia - Michelangelo’s David. It was a quick walk, and we got capps on the way.
We booked a “skip the line” tour and highly recommend them. We walked right in with a tour guide and she gave us a quick rundown of the museum. We saw a painting that had been recreated as a sculpture so that vision-impaired people could experience it. Silas enjoyed it too!
There was a room dedicated to the earliest musical instruments, which was pretty fascinating, and then the hall of Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures or “prisoners” in the marble. At the end of the hall was The David, and it was every bit as breathtaking as you could imagine. Clementine was unimpressed 😂
We learned that it only took Michelangelo 2 years to complete it, and that while Michelangelo prided himself on making his sculptures proportionate, he intentionally made the hands disproportionately bigger as it represented David’s God-given strength. We also got to see his eyes up close - the pupils are carved with hearts. And we learned that the toes on the left foot were destroyed by a crazy person in 1991 who snuck a hammer into the museum! Silas was so good at the museum and kept asking his daddy why we were visiting the “naked man” 😂
After the museum, we walked toward Mercato Centrale and had lunch on the piazza. Traci and I ordered tomato soup and were a bit surprised when it came out chunky…but the chunks weren’t tomatoes! Remember when I said bread in Florence is terrible? Well, one way they use it is by chunking it up in their tomato soup. I have to say, it was pretty delicious.
We walk to get gelato after lunch, because why not, and I casually snapped this photo of me and Clementine in front of the Duomo!
As we were walking around, we saw a woman with a sewing machine sitting in the front of her shop. It looked like she was embroidering names on all kinds of kids things - bibs, dresses, lovies, etc. Traci and I decided to stop in and ask her if there was a character limit (Clementine is usually 1 too many letters for customization). She said bo limit, so I bought a lovey and wrote down her name. I was fully expecting this lady to punch it into some sort of computer, but she sat down at her old school sewing machine and freehand sewed her name on the lovey! It was pretty incredible. A great souvenir for little miss Clementine.
Brennan and I then decide to head back to put Clementine down for a nap, while Silas rides the carousel (again) and then goes on a real horse-drawn carriage ride around the city with Lala and Grandad!
When Clementine asked up from her nap, Brennan and I decide to take the kids to the Museum of Illusions. We all needed a break from the heavy history/art museums, and Silas absolutely loved this one. There was so much for him to do. But before we even got started, he conveniently had to go potty. So I take him into the potty as Brennan has Clementine in the carrier with him. As I’m waiting for him to do his business, we notice a big horsefly flying around the bathroom. Silas shrieks, I grab whatever I could find (the diaper bag) and start trying to smash this horsefly against the bathroom mirror. It’s making so much noise, I keep missing the stupid fly and Silas is screaming at this point - he’s so freaked out by the fly. I finally grab the wipes package and slam the fly against the limited air freshener, which flies off the wall and on the ground (and I killed the fly). I walk out of the bathroom to get Brennan and he’s just staring at me asking what in the world happened. He said the whole museum could hear banging and a child screaming 🤣 I can’t help but laugh in the moment, at least I got the fly!!
Once the business was done, we explore the museum.
There were so many cool interactive exhibits for Silas to explore - I definitely recommend this to anyone with kids! At the gift shop, we bought a dinosaur “egg” that hatches in water. I thought it was going to be an overnight thing but nope…this thing is poking its head out slowly but surely each day since we bought it, and we just had to travel to France with the stupid thing 😂 anything for Silas though!
That night, the grandparents watched the kids as Brenna and I took a rooftop cooking class. We learned how to make bruschetta (btw it’s a hard ch sound - brus-ketta), homemade pasta and tiramisu. There were 16 people in the class (a ll Americans) and the nighttime views of Florence were breathtaking. After we prepared the food, we all got to eat it family style on the rooftop. This was such a cool experience and we ended up meeting some new friends, old and young!
Funny enough, our cooking instructor played the questions game with everyone throughout the class! One of her questions was, if your life was the title of a book or movie, what would it be? Mine was easy - Don’t Just Exist, Live. Yep, I know it sounds totally cliche, but I stand by it. The world is a big place with so much to learn, and we’re not here for a long time.
Will wrap up our last day in Florence tomorrow on a other post. Ciao!
Comments