Leaving for Tuscany

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Sept 28: Today we left for our 11 year late honeymoon. We flew Edmonton – Calgary and then on to Frankfurt. We were able to upgrade using Claude’s Air Canada Elite points so we had business class from there to Germany. That was very nice. They were the new “pods” so your chair had little partial walls around it like a mini cubicle and it laid back completely flat like a bed for sleeping. They served us a lovely dinner then we went to sleep (or at least I tried to), and then we woke up to a nice hot breakfast just before we landed. It was a 9+ hr flight.
Landed in Florence at around 2 in the afternoon. Caught a cab to the hotel. Hotel Albani Firenze. The hotel is right down town, close to the train station. Very quiet area. Nice older building. Our room is tucked up under the eaves so you actually step down into the room and instead of a window there is a window skylight. If you open it and climb up on a chair you can peer out at the city. Mind you we have a huge marble bathroom with a large soaker tub so we figured that was the trade off to not having a window.
We were tired but thought we would walk around down town for a bit and then go for an early bed. We walked all over the main old part of town, past the Duomo and then the Palazzo Vecchio. That is where the Michelangelo’s sculpture of David originally stood. A copy is there now, but it is still impressive. Then we crossed the Arno river to see the Oltrarno side. We had a nice simple pasta dinner sitting on a terrace facing the Pitti Palace. The weather is amazing for end of September. It was 28 today. We walked back across the PonteVecchio which is a bridge with shops right on the bridge built in 1345. It was the only bridge in Florence not destroyed by the Nazi’s during the war.
We were in bed by 9 pm and I was so tired that I actually fell asleep reading from the guide book to Claude. I have never fallen asleep reading (especially out loud), before.

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Photos

Claude in our business class airplane pods
A real comfy way to travel!!

Statue of Michelangelo's David in front of the Palazzo Vecchio
(actually it is a copy, the real one is in the museum).