Just a hello from Florence!

We arrived in Florence wed. afternoon 5/12. We took the train from Roma to Firenze. It was great! The train station is a little bit jarring if you don't speak Italian but Tim was great and we found the right track, right train and finally after some time the right compartment and seats! We had a lovely train ride through the countryside of the region Umbria and arrived at the Florence train station around 1pm.
Our hotel is a beautiful old palace, the Bernini Palace right smack in the middle of a lovely square and right next door to the government building, steps away from Neptune's Fountain, the Uffizi and the Statutes of the Rape of the Sabine Women. Everywhere we look, there are churches, churches and more churches, more squares of cobblestones that you can imagine and lots of little shops....lots of shops!!!!

Every half hour, 45 minutes and on the hour church bells ring right outside our bedroom window. We have these beautiful huge floor to ceiling casement windows that swing wide open into the room and I either feel like Juliet or Rapunzel in looking over the grated patio fencing to watch the people walking in the square next door.

Streets are so tiny that I hold my breath when walking because equally small but fast scooters come racing by about 30 miles per hour and sometimes you need to just jump out of the way. Everyone here speaks another language, but certainly everyone loves the language of beautiful Italian Renaissance art and fabulous Italian food.
During our time in Rome we hired an incredible guide to show us a special tour of the Vatican, as well as a special tour of two of the seven hills of Rome where we viewed some of the oldest churches in Rome. We also saw the Knights of Malta building and hopefully Tim will add that photo soon!
In Florence we hired a tour guide to take us to the Duomo (huge cathedral), the Uffizi (huge art gallery of art formerly owned by the Medici Family, and the academe where we saw Michelango's David. He was beautiful and huge and reminded me a little bit of Timmy. Photos to follow shortly when I wake Timmy from his nap. Today (Saturday) we traveled with another guide for a day trip through Tuscany with a spectacular stop at a winery where we had a private wine tasting and special lunch with a wine discussion by the owner. Just prior to the wine stop, we stopped in Sienna and later after wine we stopped in San Gimignano, an 11 century town with a main street so narrow and slender that cars, even the little smart cars can barely fit, and only the local cars can travel the streets. The town was charming although it was raining and cold, and you know how yucky that is when you are traveling. But after a great lunch, and trying over 10 bottles of different kinds of wine, we were a little bit more relaxed and hopefully those photos will even be okay! Ha!
Having guides to help show you around are wonderful and incredibly helpful and make life much easier for us to enjoy the many sites around us in a more knowledgeable way. Hope to write more soon, but suffice it to say in a heartbeat I would move here for a year to work and enjoy the people and the landscape. Not sure if Tim feels the same way, because he is still napping.
:) Have a great weekend!!
Gail and Tim