Day 11 Florence: August 17

We cheerfully greeted Sunday morning, anticipating a day of rest and rejuvenation. When we left for church, the street outside our hotel was nearly empty.

 

It took us about an hour combined of a bus ride and walking to get to church in Florence. 

We knew this was the right building without seeing the sign when we saw the basketball hoop in the parking lot.

Florence has a large ward that is growing steadily. We learned the building is going to be enlarged later this year to make room for all the new converts. Florence is in the Milan Italy mission which currently is the highest baptizing mission in Europe, something we did not expect to find in Italy. Brandan used the audio on Google translate for sacrament meeting which worked pretty well converting spoken Italian to written English.

When we returned from church, we saw that restaurants had set out tables and were getting ready for the lunch crowd. We took a photo to show the difference between 8:30 am and 12:30 pm.

Brandan had some stake zoom meetings to attend Sunday afternoon so Becky sat on the terrace outside our hotel room to read and write. This was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

The terrace had a small patch of sky directly overhead.

When Brandan had finished his meetings, we packed some food for dinner and headed out for a picnic. We passed some early diners.

Our destination was Piazzale Michelangelo, a piazza with beautiful views overlooking Florence.

We could see the Duomo and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio.

The piazza is dominated by a bronze replica of David.

We enjoyed a gorgeous sunset here, along with hundreds of other like minded tourists.

After sunset we walked back to our hotel, crossing the Arno River.

It was a beautiful evening.

We walked a new route and found this bronze boar. We had seen stuffed animal boars for sale, but did not understand the connection to Florence. Il Porcellino, the piglet, was cast around 1634 by an artist named Pietro Tacca. People have kept its snout shiny for hundreds of years by rubbing it for good luck. 

We arrived back at our hotel after dark and found the street the liveliest it had been all day, with diners and street performers.