We have just come back from a wonderful week in Italy. We went to see two Italian friends of ours and to celebrate an early wedding anniversary, as my husband is heading off to Copenhagen on Sunday for a week.
We took the train from Zürich to Milan, which was a very scenic route and far nicer than the route to Geneve in my humble opinion.
We decided that next Summer we should come back down to Lugano (where this lake is) and go camping as there are a few camping grounds right at the lake edge.
Once we got to Milan, we stopped for a look around and had some lunch before heading on to Florence (Firenze). Our old neighbour from Atlanta is from Florence and is spending her Summer there. Florence is the biggest city in Tuscany and it is so beautiful. It has a river running through it and has an amazing artistic, historic and cultural heritage. Our accommodation was in the old city and just a short walk to all the attractions such as shops, museums, square, statues etc.
We booked our accommodation through a great website we found,
http://www.airbnb.com/ Here you can book any kind of accommodation you like, anywhere in the world, and for any amount of time. All you have to do is type in the name of the city you're going to and the dates you want to stay and it brings up a list of options. We had a private room and bathroom in someone's home and the cost included a lovely breakfast in the garden each morning.
After we settled into our accommodation and had had a look around, we met up with our friend, had dinner and enjoyed Florence by night, which was made even nicer with the wonderful warm weather, and of course no trip to Italy would be complete without Gelato and I definitely had my fair share of it by the time we went home.
Florence is know for its leather and jewelery, the markets being the place to find leather goods and the old shops the place to find the largest pieces of jewelery you could ever hope to find. The store fronts were fantastic with their old style shutters and the jewelery inside was just as incredible (the purple fish is a bracelet).
Here are a few shots from around the town:
On our first night, our friend took us up to the top of a nearby hill so we could get a good view of the city. We had drinks up there and watched a beautiful sunset.
The large domed Cathedral you can see in these shots is the Florence Cathedral, and it is quite simply the most beautiful cathedral I have ever seen.
After a wonderful time exploring the city of Florence, our friend took us out on a day trip into the Tuscan countryside and to a Ravioli festival. Her friend was a wonderful tour guide and told us about all sorts of things along the way. It took about 3 hours to get to the festival but it was another beautiful day and the countryside was lovely.
We had a lovely setting for the festival in amongst chestnut trees.
Afterward we went on a little tour of the town and to a home of a friend of our friend, a home that was built around the 13th or 14th Century.
After a great day we headed back to Florence, stopping for dinner and a sunset along the way. We had good food at a fraction of the price it would cost in Zürich.
After such a wonderful time it was sad to leave Florence but we had one more destination and one more friend to see, so we packed ourselves up and got on a morning train to Verona. More on Verona in the next blog....
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