About a year and a half ago I decided I wanted to take a European Cruise to celebrate an upcoming milestone Birthday happening in 2012. Looking at my many options, I decided on a 7 day cruise to the Greek Isles round trip out of Venice, Italy. Knowing air fare to Italy would be expensive, I decided to fly in a week early and spend a week in Italy before getting on the Cruise ship. A wonderful two week get away. My two nieces, Kara and Leanne Stephenson, wanted to come along, so we planned the trip and here we are now in Florence starting our adventure.
Getting here was another story. We took an uneventful flight out of SLC at 8:30am on Friday, June 15th arriving at JFK with a 3 1/2 hour layover that turned into a 6 1/2 hour layover due to mechanical problems with the plane. They had to fly a part in from Atlanta before our plane could take off. We finally boarded our plane and took off from JFK heading to Rome at 10:00pm EST.
We landed in Rome and the line (if that's what you want to call it) through Passport Control was ridiculous. It was just one big massive crowd. No lines at all.
We got through got our luggage and headed to the train station. Bought our tickets into Rome and our tickets to Florence. It was a quick trip into Rome and then we transferred trains for the 1 1/2 hour trip to Florence. Train travel in Italy is wonderful. The trains are clean and comfortable and the train stations are easy to navigate. The scenery on the trip was beautiful. Italy reminds me so much of Northern California where I grew up. I feel strangely at home in the Italian countryside.
We arrived at the Train Station in Florence around 5:30pm. We just had a short jaunt to the Hotel located only 300 meters from the Train Station on a quaint little side street off a a lovely Piazza. We are staying at the Hotel San Giorgio. When we arrived at our room I was quite taken by the artistic arrangement of the throw pillows on the beds.
I'm going to pass this photo on to my General Manager at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center in case he wants to incorporate this type of throw pillow placement in our newly renovated guestrooms. It made me laugh right out loud. The room is small but comfortable and has a private bath with bidet of course.
Once we relaxed for a few minutes from the long journey, we set out to get our bearings in Florence, find some gelato and have some dinner. We found that our Hotel was conveniently located close to all the famous and familiar sights. We walked to the Duomo and Baptistry and took a few photos.
More walking down narrow streets and alleyways to discover the charms of Florence. We stopped into a small Gelateria for our first gelato of the trip. I chose Lemon, Kara had Caramel Panna Cotta and Leanne chose Orange. Florence is know for it's gelato and this was just the start of our gelato adventure. We have made a pact to enjoy a minimum of two gelatos a day. We sampled each others choices and decided there was not a bad flavor in the bunch.
Down a few more streets and we came to a Piazza with this beautiful Carousel. Very charming on a summer evening with children and families riding the old fashioned ride.
We kept walking and enjoying the sights and great people watching. We walked across the Ponte Vecchio and then down to the next bridge so we could take a picture of the Ponte Vecchio as the sun was starting to set.
On the way, we came across this Italian couple that had just gotten married. They were out on the streets having wedding pictures taken. I wish I could have gotten a better picture. They were a beautiful couple and her dress and bouquet were gorgeous.
By this time we thought we'd better grab some dinner, besides the gelato, I hadn't eaten since dinner was served on the plane at midnight NY time. I was hungry! We chose a small cafe on the Palazzo Vecchio. I ordered the Spaghetti Pomodoro made with fresh tomatoes that tasted like tomatoes and the most delicious shards of parmesan. It was the perfect meal to end a perfect first day in Italy.
With dinner finished we decided we needed nothing more than more gelato for dessert. We found a charming Gelateria on the corner of the square. I ordered the fresh Raspberry, Kara had the fresh Blackberry and Leanne ordered fresh Peach. Once again we tried each others flavors and they were delicious. The fresh Peach was especially good with chunks of fresh Peaches blended into the gelato. I think I could write an entire post just on the glories of Italian Gelato. Time to find our way back to the Hotel and turn in for the night. We were three very tired campers.
The view of the Piazza just down from our Hotel.
Buonanotte
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