Tuscany

Day 4:

This day basically involved a lot of driving. We (and in we I mean Adam) drove from Rome to Gambassi Terme, in the province of Florence. We stayed at Villa Bianca, which was a beautiful and romantic hotel. Each room was painted by a different artist. We stayed in the sun room.

Day 5:

A very relaxing day. In the morning we visited San Gimignano. A walled in village in which 14 of the original 70 or so medieval towers are still standing. We admired the views. Visited the supermarket to get some lunch. We even swam- or should I say jumped in and out- of the pool. We read, relaxed and caught up on sleep.



Day 6:

A day trip to the capital city of Tuscany, Florence.
Bridge: Ponte Vecchio over the Arno River. Lots of jewellery stores line either side of the bridge. Apparently butchers used to line the bridge until they found that they were causing the river to be polluted by discrading their waste in it. Lucky for us because jewellery stores are much nicer to look at I think.

Church of Santa Croce
The gold door features biblical scences.

Florence also included the Uffizi gallery. In Rome we had a pass that allowed us to get into monuments without lining up. We had no such magical ticket for Florence so there was a line up ( a painful two hour line up!) but the art inside was so worth it. Amazing to actually see art of the masters I have studied: Giotto, Botticelli, Mantegna, Correggio, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and German, Dutch and Flemish masters. Fantastic and-yes- worth the line up.