We had a lovely time with our Adelaide friends. Shared meals every night, an afternoon of sitting in the sun around their pool, a lot of gazing out windows at the picture postcard views and lots and lots of talking and drinking wine. Everyone at the Fattoria packed up on Friday morning to go and have other adventures ( Liz and Sean to Barcelona, Brighid to Milan, Trish to Rome, Annie and Steve to Nice and the rest to other places). We had our Airbnb booked until Saturday morning, so we drove into Florence on Friday.

If you have been there,  you know what it’s like, and if you haven’t, I really can’t string words together to adequately describe it, but it’s old and beautiful and special and worthy of a trip just to there to spend weeks and weeks soaking up the culture and art, but we only had an afternoon.

So we did what we do best … we walked as much as we could. Parked along the river not far from the Ponte Vecchio, walked across the bridge and went to gaze at the replica David standing outside the Palazzo Vecchio and to sneak a peek at the Fountain of Neptune which is being renovated and currently behind boards and shadecloth. Wandered along lanes and streets to the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore Florence Cathedral. We queued to go inside and Greg got stopped at the entrance because his shorts were too short (!!), but then the guard just motioned for him to lower them a bit and let him in. Then to the Basilica San Lorenzo, a few other piazzas (or is that piazzi?), back over another bridge, crossing the road whilst dodging a motorcyclist who was far too busy looking over his shoulder to look where he was going and see us, down a few more lanes and streets, back to the car and back to Greve.