Day 4 – Medici Chapel/San Lorenzo/Palazzo Pitti/Boboli Gardens

The blogs will get shorter in the second half of our stay. I will leave it to your imagination why this happens. All I can say is that we are truly having a wonderful time and our students are learning more and more each day. Today is all about the Medici.

We set off quite early visiting the Medici Chapels at 8.30am. We visited the new and old Sacristy and we were all truly impressed with the wealth and power of the Medici family.

We went to Mass at San Lorenzo, the Florentines don’t just hand out a tiny palm tree cutting, it seems to be all about waving the branches here.

After a quick snack, actually I can never say quick! What should take a mere 15 or 30 minutes takes slightly longer – we headed for Palazzo Pitti, as I said, it is all about the Medici today. Palazzo Pitti houses hundreds of paintings so a fun way for the kids to see the paintings was a treasure hunt, in search of a handful of well known paintings such as Caravaggio’s Sleeping Cupid, Raphael’s Mother and Child and others. The highlight of the day was Boboli Gardens where we could lie in the grass, enjoy the view and the weather. We also managed a short session of sketching.

We headed back to the hostel after giving in to the usual pleading of “Please can we go shopping!!?”