Trip to Italy Part 2a: Florence

We took hundreds of pictures and it's is taking me so long to go through them and delete fuzzy ones and duplicates and fix them for lighting, etc.  Plus we're taking a German class every Mon-Thu night so I don't have much time at night. So this is getting posted very slowly and piecemeal.

In Florence on our first day we headed out to the Pitti Palace, a residence of the D'Medici family who were cultural and political leaders in Florence and Italy.  We were going to walk by several other famous things on our way.  But not even five minutes after leaving our apartment my mom noticed a paper shop that she had heard of from her calligraphy connections called Il Papiro.  She went in to look around and they offered to show her how they make marbled paper, something that Florence is known for.  So this guy showed us how it was done and then offered to let the kids try it.  So Rand, then Jason, then Hayley and then Camilla all made their own sheet of marbled paper.  This experience was priceless and was never even part of our itinerary!  We got to keep all the papers the kids made and you can be sure we bought several things from that store.  I only took one video because I was afraid I would run out of camera space and we were just beginning our day.  This is of Rand but it was pretty much the same for the rest of the kids too.

Here's what the liquid looked like just before they laid a piece of paper on it so the pattern could transfer to the paper.  It was fascinating!   They could only make one sheet of paper at a time.  All the ink is sitting on top of the liquid (water and wallpaper glue and who knows what else), and after 1 sheet of paper is made the ink is all gone.