Boboli Gardens Take 2

About a month ago, as you may remember, when we visited Florence we tried to go to Boboli Gardens, but there was a storm the night before and they were cleaning up the debris. We decided this week to try again.

Our day began with an hour and half train ride to get to Florence, or Firenze as we say in Italy. We then made our way to Ponte Vecchio, but decided to cross over the Arno River one bridge over to get a different view than we had before.

After a short walk across our bridge to the opposite side, we made our way to Pitti Palace, home of Boboli Gardens.

We bought our tickets and entered the garden. It was huge. As big as Disneyland!

One of the first things we saw when we walked in was a huge circular courtyard with a bunch of statues around it and a big path through the middle.

After making our way through the courtyard and up a hill, we came to a looooong pathway that seemed to go on forever. There was also a big head statue that looked ancient but was in fact only 20 years old.

During our walk down the long path, we found what looked like a giant breath mint. We decided to make shadow figures on it.

After we left the "mint", we noticed at the end of the path was a giant fountain with a pond around it.

We wandered around the pond-fountain and found another humungous courtyard with a cool tree (sorry, no picture). By this point I was panting because the garden is so big; a never-ending maze of greenery (no flowers right now because it's the wrong season).

Our next stop was a high lookout point with what looked like a mini hedge-maze. 

Right next door was a porcelain museum that was really cool because it had tiny sculptures with small details. My favorite was a dog playing a piano with all her pups around her. The fur on all the animals was very delicate, small, and realistic. It blew my mind (again, sorry, no picture),

When we finished looking around, we started heading back toward the palace, but on the way we stopped to get some water and a Twix bar because we were hungry and thirsty from our long voyage. As we neared the palace, we found a great view of Firenze. You can see Il Duomo and the tower at Palazzo Vecchio as well as a lot of the beautiful city around them.

On our tickets we also had passes to the costume museum which had opera costumes and clothing of ladies who used to live in the palace, along with a few that men wore too. One of my favorites was a purple opera gown with a bunch of silver stars on the bottom. It looked very much like an opera gown to me (and again, no picture, sorry).

We finished up and stopped at a small grotto on the way out that had carvings on the wall of people and animals as well as beautiful paintings on the ceiling.

However, the worst part of the trip was when we saw a sculpture of a fat, naked, harry man sitting on a very large tortoise. As I've said, everything in this garden is large and this man was no exception! (definitely no picture of this one!) It's not the fact that the man was naked that bothered me, it's that he was crushing that poor turtle! (Dad note: for the curious and brave, you can see a picture of it here).

It was very exciting and interesting to see. I'm glad we had a chance to go back, though I must say it was very tiring. I had no problem going to sleep that night.