Florence

After spending last night on the Italian Riviera near Portofino (incredibly beautiful place), we arrived in Florence after a 2 1/2 hour drive across Tuscany. Then the fun really began! Trying to find your way around Florence is a tourist's nightmare. The directions we had for our B & B led us around and around in circles. Have you ever seen the scene from the Simpson's where they get stuck in a round about in London and can't get out? That was us today. And Karen had read in her Rick Steve's guidebook that you can't drive into the city center or you'll get fined. So she was really afraid that we would make a wrong turn.

We finally stumbled upon the Piazza del Liberte, which we knew was near our hotel, and Rose and Lora parked our cars in residential parking spaces and Karen and I walked to find our B & B. Luckily, the owner was there to let us in. She told us we could drop off our bags and then drive to the airport to drop our cars and take a taxi back to the city. So that's what we did. We had a few more stressful moments making our way to the airport, but we finally got back to the city and had the taxi drop us at the San Lorenzo Market for some shopping. It was only about a 10 minute walk from there back to our B & B.

Our B & B is very nice. The rooms are large and roomy and the internet is free. Yesterday in the Italian Riviera, the internet was 6 euros for 30 minutes, so we skipped it.

Our B & B host told us where to find a good restaurant for dinner. Lora and I had a delicious pumpkin and mushroom soup and Karen had a wonderful lasagna. The rest of the food was so-so, and the service was not so great.

Tomorrow we have a tour of the Uffizi and the Acadamia Museums. We also hope to fit in the Duomo, the Boboli Gardens, and the Ponta Vecchio Bridge. Three of the four of us have flights that leave around 7 am on Friday, so we'll have to fit everything we can in tomorrow.

I'll have to write later about our time in Bellagio on Lake Como. Loading pictures is a very slow process, but we have some stunning pictures I hope to load tomorrow. The Lake Como area is amazingly beautiful. The lake, the colorful villas, the majestic snow covered Alps all take your breath away.