I think we're in Florence?

We still haven't told you about arriving in Switzerland and the ensuing dramas before we arrived in Venice, nor the great time we had while we were there. Instead I'm going to skip ahead to today when we left Venice and arrived in Florence. 

Despite all our good intentions of spending today exploring, I think we managed only two hours daylight, maximum.  I'm running out of steam.

Georgia's alarm went off at 0400. That gave us an hour to get up, showered, packed and down to reception to check out and find a taxi. Most mornings haven't seen us get up before about 1000, so six hours earlier was a real stretch, but we did it and made it in plenty of time for the 0537 departure to Florence by train.   We slept most of the way and arrived in what seemed like 30 minutes but in reality it was two hours. It's dark here until 0830 so by the time we'd had breakfast at the hotel and put our heads down for '10 minutes', it was midday. There went my good intentions of making an early start.

Feeling guilty about being in such a beautiful city and still lazing around in bed, we dragged ourselves out into the wet, cold day and walked the few blocks to the Duomo before finding somewhere to eat. Georgie had done a bit of research earlier and planned on spending some time at the Leonardo da Vinci Museum.    It was really informative and interactive for kids with hands-on models of quite a lot of his designs. The best bit was a film about his life, in which he was eventually usurped by Michelangelo..... plus we got to sit down again while we watched that for an hour! (See the 2 'moaners' below)

It was 1630 by the time we finished there. My 'virus' has started to come back with renewed vigour so a quick walk home and it was back into bed for me for a few hours.  See? Only two hours of daylight today between 1230 and 1430.

I'd read a review on the hotel website that the restaurant next door was pretty good so dinner at 7.30 pm did not disappoint. If you ever come to Florence, do yourself a favour ad go to www.pizzabarbano.it. Such simple food, but omg, the flavour! (see pic below)

Well that's it. Not much to report because the days seem to be flying by and we're getting tired. I'd like to say we'll have more of a chance to blog when we get to Rome, but given its only for a week, maybe not. Georgie and I were talking at dinner tonight about how fast our trip is going so we're thinking of simplifying life and just staying in Paris for 3-4 weeks instead of only 2, that way we won't be as rushed. Now, if only we knew where to spend the week between the cruise finishing in Rome and our move to Paris.
Write to us if anyone has any good suggestions. Does anyone know what Corsica is like?

For our last two days in Florence we've decided to do a couple of organised day trips since we're so tired; I thought it'd be a good idea to leave the planning to someone else for a change. Tomorrow (14th) we're going on a 12 hour trip to Pisa, San Gimigano and Siena including free wine tasting and lunch somewhere in the Tuscan countryside. Georgia is always asking me questions, so it'll be a relief to have a guide on hand. On Tuesday we're going on a half day Florence city tour which takes all the worry out of organising tickets and transport to see what Michelangelo got up to...and once again, the tour guide will probably get an earful from Georgia.

That's all for now. I'll let you know if the tour guide survived.

PS. Darn post wouldn't publish with the photos attached, maybe they're too large. I'll put them up in a day or so when I've worked it out. In the meantime, here's a stand-in for Leonardo's Mona Lisa.