Seems silly to be blogging about Italy from Squam Lake, but I will do that for the sake of documentation. I wrote blog posts for the last week of our trip, but was too busy to post. So forgive the "present tense" nature of the rest of my posts for this year's trip.
Off to Florence today. Up and out by 10—not as early as we meant to, but…We managed to sleep till 8:15, even though it was glass day. Glass day is when they pick up the glass recyclables. The crashing sounds of breaking glass starting at 6:30 am is really something one can’t imagine until living through it. We got to the hotel at 1:00. The boys got stuck in the elevator briefly, which gave me a bit of a scare, but it soon resolved itself. It was scary when the hotel clerk said, “Oh, God” several times. We also had a little snafu due to my forgetting to tell Adam to bring his passport, but Jayne emailed it and all was fine.
The boys soon set out for a long walk, following by the Uffizi, then back to the room for a short rest. Florence is pretty small and Owen knows it well at this point. Fred and I walked around, shopped, had a nice lunch of pesto pasta (him) and caprese salad (me), walked more, and stopped for a spritz near the hotel.
A very nice and leisurely day—the kind I like because we’ve already seen so many of the sights and we can just hang, guilt free. It rained BIG raindrops today! We were all really tired from all the walking, so lucky for us, the dinner restaurant (Il Contandina) was just a few blocks away. We had not been there in eight years, not since the boys were little and the chef made them special simple pasta dishes. It did not disappoint!
Off to Florence today. Up and out by 10—not as early as we meant to, but…We managed to sleep till 8:15, even though it was glass day. Glass day is when they pick up the glass recyclables. The crashing sounds of breaking glass starting at 6:30 am is really something one can’t imagine until living through it. We got to the hotel at 1:00. The boys got stuck in the elevator briefly, which gave me a bit of a scare, but it soon resolved itself. It was scary when the hotel clerk said, “Oh, God” several times. We also had a little snafu due to my forgetting to tell Adam to bring his passport, but Jayne emailed it and all was fine.
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| The view from our hotel. Check out that patio! |
The boys soon set out for a long walk, following by the Uffizi, then back to the room for a short rest. Florence is pretty small and Owen knows it well at this point. Fred and I walked around, shopped, had a nice lunch of pesto pasta (him) and caprese salad (me), walked more, and stopped for a spritz near the hotel.