Tam & Peg’s Excellent Adventure

Florence

Ah…. Firenze!!!!
Our trip from Venice to Florence was beautiful and we arrived at the Westin Excelsior at dinnertime and were assigned an absolutely lovely room with a view of steeples, domes and spires all over the place. We decided on room service for dinner and planned an early wake up for Friday morning.
After taking care of some power/batteries/internet issues, we did some local exploring, including a “hop on, hop off” tour to get oriented with the city and then had lunch in the rain under an awning on a sidewalk near the hotel.
At 2 PM, our private car picked us up for a drive into the hills of Tuscany where we visited a castle, built in the 1300’s which now is owned by an Italian family who runs a beautiful winery there and also does special events such as weddings, reunions, etc. They even have “apartments” which are rented per night! It is a gorgeous setting! We had a tour of the winery and a private tasting of their very nice wines. We used our evening to relax and work on our blog.
Today (Saturday), we got an early start with another bus tour of a larger area of Florence which took us up into the hills of Tuscany again and into some villages that were there 700 years BC! This is (among many other things) the area where Michelangelo was a child and is also the home of the beautiful marble was quarried for many of his sculptures, including David.
From around 11am to 4:30pm, we walked around in old Florence visiting cathedrals, plazas, palaces, museums. We were sorry that none of the important museums were available for us to get inside because of the very long lines, so we decided that, rather than stand for 3 hours in one line to see one important attraction, we’d go around and see the outside of many interesting ones. It was a hard choice, but we had a great afternoon.
We’re on our way to Rome for the last two days of our Excellent Adventure. We will arrive late and get away early tomorrow for a walking tour of Ancient Rome and then a “get acquainted” bus tour of Rome.