Blogs from Florence, Tuscany, Italy, Europe - page 2

Wednesday Eric and I took off on Air France with a brief stop in Paris on our way to Florence, Italy. Five minutes into the drive to the airport, I got an alert on my phone saying our flight was delayed 4 hours, so we went back home. We were going to miss the second leg of our trip, so I nervously waited for everything to be rearranged and rebooked, and fortunately it was all smoothed out in time. The flight and stop were uneventful, though Paris CDG airport was under construction and we felt very rushed going through security a second time and making our way to the other concourse. The Thursday midday landing in Florence was extremely abrupt, and I overheard the flight attendant mention to a mother with small children that the runway ... read more

Bonjour à tous, Hier au soir j'ai enfin trouvé le restaurant conseillé par Denis. Lui m'avait indiqué via????mais c'était vialle ???. Excellente adresse, pour manger, mais 45 minutes pour garer le voiture, j'étais sur le bord de renoncer, quand enfin une place. Au resto, le patron me dit en français, c'est samedi, on refuse en permanence, oui, mais c'est Denis qui m'envoie chez vous, alors patienté 2 minutes, qui se sont transformées en 20-25. J'ai patienté car je voyais défilé des plats qui me tentaient beaucoup, et ma nectarine du midi était loin. Enfin assis, j'attendais qu'on prenne la commande, lorsqu'il est revenu, avec un gars, un vieux, peut être plus jeune que moi, c'est un ami, je le mets avec toi. Ce gars connaissait la table d'à côté. Finalité, comme j'étais français, j'ai eu 6 ... read more

After an evening walking around, we stopped and had drinks just outside the Duomo. It was fun to bask in the moonlight at a small outdoor café. Before hitting Florence, we thought we’d spend a couple of hours in Pisa. Pisa was only an addition when we knew we’d have grandkids along. Dale and I were above the tourist trap thing. From our apartment in Florence, we were able to walk to the train station in about 5 – 10 min. We hopped the train and an hour later we were in Pisa. We tried to follow the Rick Steves walk but kept getting lost. Finally, we made it to the Leaning Tower missing most of what we were supposed to see. What a tower, it really leans, like it looks like it is going to ... read more

Hello everyone, this was part of a 3 month trip through Europe. We started in Venice and ended up in London. We started these blogs after we had already been to Australia, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Canada. We couldn't upload photos very well (if at all) and mostly just wanted to be able to remember all of our trips. Everyone once in a while someone calls me and asks questions about our travels and I'm always excited to relive them and share our experiences in hopes it will make their trip better. When we first started on these long trips we didn't interact with locals as much as I wish we had. As we got more comfortable being gone 1-2-3-4 months at a time, we also slowed down and savored visiting and sharing a lot more. ... read more

Florence was beautiful without tourists and it was really nice to be able to pick out the florentines as they were the only visible group of people in Florence, as there were no tourists. I could also admire the buildings and take clearer photos than I had been able to over the last 3 years, before the general lockdown came into force and flights from Asia and the US arriving into Italy were banned, which saw a huge drop in tourism to Florence. I arrived in Santa Maria Novella station, walked past the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, then towards Piazza del Duomo, then towards Piazza Della Signoria and on to Ponte Vecchio, where I took several photos of the river Arno. The Basilica of Santa Maria Novella is probably the church I passed by most ... read more