Everyone had their best collective night of sleep yet! We all slept through the night - I was awake at 7, but had my eyes closed and I even heard Abby climb out of her bed next to me and then climb back in and put herself back to sleep for 90 min (she later told me that was in the middle of the night - God bless the babies who can’t tell time yet!). We all got up about 8:30 and got ready and went down to breakfast - it was fair: Lauren had pancakes (reheated in a toaster), passed on her hard boiled egg (Jeff ate it). Abby tried something kinda like Frosted Flakes, but didn’t like them. She ate 5 pieces of bacon and they each ate a kiwi. I had coffee and a chocolate croissant and a little scrambled egg. Jeff ate eggs and bacon and then made a ham and cheese sandwich. And lots of OJ for the girls!
We then walked towards the Duomo and the girls legs just wouldn’t work. They popped up a bit through Piazza Santa Maria Novella because there was a craft market and souvenir shops. Practically dragged them from there into the Piazza Duomo and bought gelato at the first place we saw. That got everyone to walk around the cathedral. (I told Jeff to come back and go through the cathedral himself, but the line wrapped halfway around the (giant) building). We stopped to one side for a brief rain shower, and then walked up to Piazza di’Indipendenza. There was a playground and a place for the girls to run around. After a bit Abby had to go potty, so we found a public bathroom on the other side of the park - it was actually kinda cool - a metal box, and you paid 50 cents to get in, when all 4 of us went in it beeped and the door reopened and Jeff had to get out for the door to close (a man came walking over and confirmed “una solo”). So the girls and I went and then hopped out and it cleans itself before the next person goes in.
Back to the park until 1:30 and then we walked back toward Piazza Santa Maria Novella (the girls are getting good at walking in the city - today they wanted to walk together instead of with me and Jeff and they sweetly held hands and stayed between us) - we stopped at McDonald’s along the way for Abby to get some nuggets and Jeff to get a Coke. We just sat out on the curb, which was crowded since it’s right next to the train station. Then the girls had a meltdown over souvenirs- we want them to wait until tomorrow to pick something since we’re going to a museum and to Ponte Vechio, and they just couldn’t wait. I pulled out granola bars for Lauren and that got everyone back to balanced.
We found a restaurant on the square and sat outside - the wind was gusty for a while and we kept having to hold onto everything on our table, but it turned out to be my favorite meal yet - my spaghetti alla carbonara was mediocre, but we had a giant fruit plate for the girls (with maybe the best cantaloupe I’ve ever had!), pizza for Jeff, and a caprese salad. And more importantly, the girls colored happily (and together!) for 2.5 hours, so we sat and enjoyed the sunshine and people watching. As we left I stopped by a jewelry stand at the craft market and bought the girls each a necklace I had been thinking about since we passed in the morning - I’ll wrap them for Christmas (and I’m sure I’ll hear that they would rather have had the junky stuffed dolls at the souvenir stand- ha!).
We came back to the room for movie night. We got a free bottle of Prosecco with our stay so jeff and I had a glass and the girls munched on stuff in the room and we all watched Coco (I tried for Luca, being in Italy and all, but was overruled).
Tonight is daylight savings time in Europe (I’m actually writing this during the second 2am hour - Abby woke me to tuck her back in at 2:45 and I couldn’t get right back to sleep, so I watched 2:59 turn to 2:00 on my phone and was thinking about how I forgot to write since we were watching a movie last night and then I read my book while the girls were falling asleep). We have tickets at 10:30 for the Davinci Interactive Museum, which will give us extra plenty of time to have breakfast and head over.
So all in all, a delightful day. A much needed reset after yesterday.
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