Florence, Italy - September 2009

We took the Eurostar train from Venice to Florence. That was an experience in itself since we made friends with the "Six Witches of Uraguay" along the way! That would be referring to six sisters from Uraguay who were traveling together for a month all over Europe. Four of them sat next to us and the other two were a little further down in the coach but they were all so funny. We had a great time visiting with them. This was a first for me.. riding a train like that. So it was fun.

We got into Florence and only had to walk a couple of blocks to our hotel, the Grand Hotel Minerva in Santa Maria Novella Square. This was by far the best hotel yet! The service was awesome. They even steamed my wedding dress one evening and had it back in the room by the time we returned from dinner. That was great and the price was very reasonable.

It was rainy both days that we were in Florence so we had to be very careful with the camera equipment. I really think we shot the fewest number of images here and because of the rain, I didn't want to go outside in my dress. It was our 3rd anniversary and I wanted to do something really cool. Oh well, we still had Rome.

We enjoyed a couple of nice dinners while in Florence and I had my fill of black truffles. One of my favorite foods in the world but so very expensive and hard to find.

We enjoyed walking the streets and looking at all of the buildings and the people. The architecture is amazing and to thing about how old these cities are is just mind boggling to me. We ventured down to the Arno River and camped out a spot right in the center of a bridge just north of the Ponte Vecchio bridge. We did this two nights in a row to get what we were looking for. While Bryan was doing all of the technical stuff, I was pretty much just sitting on the edge of the bridge watching the people walk by and in awe of the whole place. I never thought in a million years I would ever see the likes of what I had seen in the last 10 days.. and what I still had left to see in the next 4.

Strangers would stop and ask me to take their pictures with their cameras so that the Ponte Vecchio bridge would be in the background. I think I did this about 10 or 12 times. Afterwards I realized that had I charged 5 Euro for each time, I could have had about $75 USD back in my pocket. Oh well.

~V