Greetings from Firenze (aka Florence) Italy!
We had a long drive in the rain to Venice 2 days ago, and took a most forgettable boat ride across the lagoon. I wonder if we would have been drier outside! We landed and trudged across a bridge or two to our hotel. We had time to dry off, change clothes, and then head out for dinner. I ate the pasta primavera but others were brave and ate the Fruit of the Sea spaghetti dinner, with mussels and other littel creepy crawlies.
After dinner, we walked back towards St Mark's Square and luckily the rain had stopped. I was enjoying the music of the orchestra and thought it was funny that they had an accordian player with them. As I paused to take a picture of that, someone came up behind me and put a camera right at my temple, like they were taking a close up picture of my forehead. This has happened before to me - by only one person on this planet ... my brother!! I spun around and it was him!!! What a shock!! My aunt and mom knew all along that he was surprising Jen with a trip to Italy for their 5th anniversary!! So they had it all coordinated behind my back to meet up in St. Mark's at the clock tower!
We wandered around the rest of that evening with them and walked them to where they caught their boat to their nice hotel. Then we met up with them in the AM after our walking tour, and we spent the rest of the afternoon doing the touristy things - eating along the grand canal, taking a gondola ride (We let Jen use her superstar haggling powers to get the price down), etc. What fun memories!! That was definately a good surprise!
Velva and I went in the museums and St. Mark's cathedral and all that stuff, did some quick souvenier shopping, and then today we headed here to Florence. Tonight we go to the Accademia museum and tomorrow we do the Uffizi gallergy and have free time to go leather shopping!! Woo hoo!
I am loving the self-guided tours that are in the sight-seeing supplement that came with the tour. It's helping me to get a lot more out of these places because otherwise I'd likely just blow through them in 10 min like I did with the St. Mark's church!
Gotta go - I'm doing laundry and time's up!