Florence and Tuscany

Hi everyone.  Thanks so much for you comments as we travel around this most lovely part of the world.  We are in Rome at the moment so I am a little behind with my blogging.  I am in love with Florence, the highlight for me was seeing Michelangelo's David which was incredible.  We also had very nice accommodation in Florence in a very treed part of the city.  I could have bought every pair of shoes I saw as the prices were SO reasonable for beautiful leather shoes we would pay a fortune for in Australia.  Here are some photos of our time in beautiful Florence.

Our accommodation.

The terrace where we ate our breakfast.

The view from our bedroom window.

David in all his glory.  Hubby snuck in a photo for me.

The Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge in Florence which is wall to wall jewellery shops.

Impossibly narrow streets where pedestrians, buses, cars, taxis, bicycles,  motorbikes and scooters somehow wend their way through.

A view of an outer area of the city.

We took a peek inside this beautiful church, the proportions were staggering.

We visited the beautiful Boboli Gardens adjoining the Pitti Palace.  Here are a few photos taken on our visit.

These gorgeous Peonies were in a garden next to a building displaying old and very tradition Tuscan ceramics.   I preferred the gardens to the ceramics.

 We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Florence and were eagerly looking forward to our time in the Tuscan countryside.  Here are some photos of where we stayed.

Our room was up the stairs on the left, our bedroom window up the top.

Sitting on the little balcony.  I was so tired when this photo was taken as we had done so much walking.  I sat here one evening having a glass of lovely Tuscan red wine while hubby was out exploring taking black and white photos.

There were lovely gardens and plants in pots at our accommodation.  These were pink oxalis.  If the oxalis in my garden at home were pink, I'd be very happy.

About 2km from where we stayed was an old castle which dates from the 1200's.  There were poppies growing wild everywhere, lots of lovely old stone buildings and houses and even an abandoned church.

The Tuscan countryside is a mix of vineyards, olive groves, fields of wheat and barley.  In some areas the olive trees grow right up to the side of the road.  We saw very few sheep and no cows so there were no fences in the farming areas.

We visited a number of medieval towns, actually stumbled on them which was a complete surprise and joy.  I took so many photos of gorgeous houses, narrow cobble stoned streets and doors, lots of doors.

The GPS had us get into some bother on a number of occasions and getting out of one village, we went down a goat track which was really scary.  We drove through the old city centre of Sienna in a place that was meant only for local traffic.  We received odd looks but a shrug of the shoulders seems to help when you make mistakes.

The goat track with a gradient of 20%.

Driving through Sienna.

We didn't want to leave Tuscany as we had such a lovely time.  We will have such fond memories of this beautiful part of the world.

Next installment will be Rome.  I probably won't get to blog again for about a week as where we are staying in the Cinque Terre on the Italian west coast doesn't have internet facilities.

Thank you for taking an interest in our travels,

Anne  xx