A Winelover's Wanderings

I don't think I mentioned in my previous posts, but our departure from Lucca was by CAB! After experiencing the Italian train system, we decided that we could not get the short distance from Lucca to Florence by train with all of the luggage we had.

So, we hired a cab to drive us to Villa Massei for a visit and then on to Florence. I have blocked out the part of what the cab cost us, which is probably just as well.

We had booked a room at Residenze Johlea I, a 15-minute walk from central Florence. The rooms were plain but fine, but we really enjoyed sitting up on the rooftop terrace in the evenings.

Here is what I did on the rooftop terrace:

And here is what Bill did:

This was my first time in Florence, but Bill had been there before. Even so, we made reservations at both the Uffizi Museum and at the Accademia Gallery to see David. I really enjoyed seeing David, maybe more so than the Uffizi - it was kind of overwhelming to me. Perhaps if I had read a little more about what we were seeing, I would have enjoyed it more.

While walking back to our hotel one evening, we came across this little restaurant, Da Mimmo. We have a kitty named Mimmo and wanted to eat there in her honor, but it was closed during August for holiday.

We did the other usual things people do in Florence - visit the Duomo and the Ponte Vecchio and eat and drink well.

But then our trip was coming to an end. We were to fly on Meridiana Airlines from Florence back to London and then home. The Meridiana part of the trip was a real fiasco. I had gotten cheap tickets online before we left, but when we checked in on the morning of our departure, our bags (especially mine) were so overweight they were going to charge us about $200 in overweight fees. We went round and round with them about it and ended up buying an extra seat for about $100 to cover the extra baggage. Kind of learned the hard way on that one!

We did finally make it home after a really long day. We were tired by oh so glad we had done it. My first trip to Europe but not my last!