Of Genius and Gelato

I am getting spoiled.  Seriously.  Breakfast in the garden two days in a row, and Fabio's breakfasts are amazing:  cappuccino, fresh fruit, prosciutto, Brie, pastries, yogurt, hard boiled eggs.  Patty and I were well fueled for another day of exploring Florence.  We met Jeremy and the boys near a graffiti-filled tunnel, ran a couple of errands, and then went to the Leonardo da Vinci Machine Museum.  This was an interactive museum which the boys loved and we all learned some amazing things about this genius of a man.

He was an illegitimate child who could not even take his Father's name, but was called Leonardo from Vinci.  No money would be spent on his education and he realized that to overcome this he would need to learn a trade, so he joined the Guild and started drawing.  A Florentine painter named Verrocchio took Leonardo on as an apprentice, but I think it's safe to say da Vinci's work soon surpassed his teacher.  He was truly a Renaissance man...curious and fluent in so many branches of study, wholly scientific and logical, but given to beauty and ascetics.  He had over 15,000 pages of notes when he died, and some of his inventions...helicopter, armored tank, ball bearing, and our favorite, the heat-propelled automatic rotisserie spit were decades ahead of their time.  He did not, however, publish his notes, and oftentimes, he lost interest in his ideas and did not finish his commissions.  But oh, such genius.

We went for gelato after our museum tour, did some people watching which is always fun, and then went to the Chiesa di Orsanmichele, a 13th century church in the heart of Florence. Originally used for the grain market, it became a place of devotion and miracles were attributed to an image of the Virgin Mary painted on one of the pillars.  The inside is a beautiful tabernacle done in Gothic and the Guilds were commissioned to sculpt statues of the patron saints on the outside, one of which was sculpted by Donatello.

We were all ready for a break, so we headed back to our rooms for riposo.  We met again in the evening to grab a bite to eat and see the Basilica di Santa Croce, but honestly, the biggest reason was to find Tivoli...the best gelateria in Florence.  Amazing.  Jeremy had pear-caramel, Patty had hazelnut-chocolate, Jordan had fantasia, Jackson had tiramisu, and I had orange-chocolate.  We had walked 10 miles yesterday, and nearly 15 today, so you see, you really CAN have gelato twice in the same day.  Jeremy and the boys head to Rome tomorrow. It has been wonderful spending time with them...I love their adventurous spirit.