florence.

at night time, after we had seen the whole city in the day, cam lead us on a little hike up to see the whole city. apparently, this hike is pretty infamous and a whole bunch of renaissance artists have been inspired by it and i can see why because the view from up there was breathtaking. 

while on this trip, i realized that i have a serious fear of heights. this ledge right here had a huge drop right beneath it, and it took a lot of persuasion to get me on top of it. i hope the picture is worth it and i know the view definitely was. we hiked up this giant hill to overlook the city at sunset. it was gorgeous. absolutely amazing.

whit and court.

whit and our men.

the view from the top of the hill! what a beautiful city florence is. 

found this spray painted on the pathway up the hill. loved it. it's currently my desktop photo.

sweet garrett has a little bit of anxiety about his pin code and his passwords. whenever he would sign into his email account or put in the password on his ipod touch, he would turn away from us as if we were going to try to hack into it. weird, but hey i guess it's better to be paranoid than sorry. so here is little whit, guarding garrett's pin at the atm. 

the streets of florence. lovely is really the only word i have for it.

miss whit and garrett walking through the streets. florence is famous for it's market, and we went twice that day. i bought my brother three ties for 3 euro each and bought my mom the most gorgeous black duffle bag. florence is also famous for it's leather, for good reason too, because the bag i bought is just incredible. and i got it for only 80 euro, originally marked at 230 euro, and the boys told me that in the us, the bag would go for over $400. you know i love a deal!

ta-da! here he is. mr. david in the flesh. photography was forbidden inside so i had to be really sneaky to snap a pic. it was way bigger than i expected. monstrous. after seeing the statue david and visiting the ufice, i was so tired of seeing naked men. i have a lot of respect for human anatomy and i think bodies are beautiful and all that jazz, but really, i am done staring at nakedness.

whit at our cute little hotel. the girls had our own separate room this night, which was nice because we had room to breathe and we could take nice long showers and relax more. for dinner, we stopped by a little pizzeria on the way and picked up pizzas and took them back and ate them in bed in the boys room because we didn't want to get our room dirty. it was cute, all 5 of us snuggled in our pajamas and one big bed, enjoying four cheese and sausage pizza. 

mr. jenkins.

cam, checking into our hotel. we were early for our check in, so we reluctantly left all of our bags in the lobby and ventured out to see the city. the girls and i were hesitant to leave all of our belongings, but the boys persuaded us to practice some faith and have some trust and low and behold, everything turned out just fine.

i took this through the train window on the ride from rome to florence. we went through tuscany, which is filled with sunflower fields. this picture doesn't do it justice. the colors were magnificent! what a beautiful country italy is. really.