Back from Italy

What an amazing trip! So many new friends, so many new memories, and so much to plan for in the future.

We arrived in Florence and went to our hotel, the Hotel Aldobrandini. Finding it was a trip in itself since the hotel name (a 500 year old building) was also the name of the street. In Italy there are no street signs as we know them - they are blocks inserted into the walls of the buildings so Aldobrandini was on ALL the buildings around our hotel. In the picture at the left notice the square to the right of the door just above the scooter's handles. Now look up. Do you see the little gold looking smaller square? That was the buzzer for entry into our hotel and THE ONLY THING THAT CONTAINED THE NAME OF THE HOTEL. And, it was behind a street vendor's market tent you can't see that is to the right of the scooters. But, we found it, punched the button and finally the "inner sanctum" sounding door opened slowly. We finally found our hotel room (up a teenie, tiny sprial staircase) but the hotel, room, and the people running the hotel were superb! We had a great time then and scheduled our last two nights in Italy (after our stay at the villa) at the same hotel. It was wonderful.