Abbastanza Bene!

At some point earlier this week it looked as if the world was conspiring to keep us from having a good time on our vacation in Florence - wind storms and volcanic ash clouds shutting down Scottish airports, calls for 4 days of thunderstorms during our stay, a potential bag-losing one hour transfer in Paris and an almost complete blanking of all the Italian we learnt over the past few months.

But the gods were smiling on us today and now we're tucked into our hotel room on the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, having enjoyed a good trip, a brief walk around the city and nice dinner out on the piazza. The weather is great - 30C with blue skies, sun and a cooling breeze, sort of what we hoped we would have had on our trip to the Canaries a couple of months ago.

We took a quick taxi from Amerigo Vespucci airport to our hotel. Our room has a view over the piazza and on to the church, which has this amazing white and green marble facade bolted on to the front of what is clearly a much older and more run down structure.

We also walked a few piazzas further to see the Duomo. It took us some time to pick our jaws up off the floor. It is absolutely immense. On top of that is is covered in red and green and white marble, statues and relief carvings. THe dome is enormous. I'm really looking forward to going back and taking a look at the inside as well.

We walked back to the piazza in front of our hotel and had dinner outside at one of the restaurants. We shared a plate of prosciutto e melone. The prosciutto was easily the best I've ever eaten, and the melon was deliciously sweet. Fiona had some spaghetti carbonara and I had some mushroom risotto. We finished off with a large gelato cioccolato. Fabulous.

Ignoring the commotion coming from the next piazza, where 'Jersey Shore' is filming, we're now back at the hotel, preparing for a good night's sleep ahead of what will surely be a fantastic day of sightseeing tomorrow.

Before I sign off, just a 'Happy Birthday' to my Dad, who gave me the deep appreciation for history, culture and politics that will make this trip such a good one. Thanks, Dad. Wish we could be touring these grand old churches together.

It looks like our internet connection is some type of Renaissance affair - perhaps a combination of mice and pigeons passing on paper messages. It doesn't look like we will succeed in posting any pictures while we are here. Keep an eye on these spaces, we'll likely do some posts and then add the pictures when we get back to Scotland.