Florence

Bill and I had a lovely time in Florence, it really is a gorgeous renaissance city. Our hotel was very close to the Duomo (pictured above). Our first day we headed over to the Church of Santa Croce , which was had tombs for Machivelli, Michealangelo, Boccacio, Gallileo and a monuument to Dante. It also contained "romantic gravestones", and a museum. Thursday we to the the archeological museum which was full of Etruscan artifacts we then headed to the Duomo which was another fantastic church. We went to the arcehological excavations in the crypt which were also fantastic. Thursday we managed to go to the Uffizzi and I was very pleased to see the Botticelli. Then we found a museum of the history of science, we figured as we were in Florence it would be full of lovely renaissance scientific equipment and we were not dissapointed! It had the Medici's collection of equipment, lovely brass instruments, huge globes and 3 meter tall armillary sphere as well as two of Gallileo's telescopes, (and his finger!). Bill managed to find some hard to find Latin books, I bought a guidebook in Chinese and we also got a lovely huge copy of Dante's Divine Comedy with the Doré illustrations.

A few pictures from my phone camera. beluosus should be posting proper pictures later. ( here )

It was a FANTASTIC trip, even if the hotel room was a little cold. Unfortunatly Friday coming home was HELL!

We had to get back to the airport for our flight, we bought train tickets only to have announced at the time the train was supposed to have left that it was CANCELLED due to a strike. We figured there was still over 2 hours till we had to be on the plane so we could make it. Unfortunatly the next bus didn't leave till 11.30 and would get us to the airport right as the plane was leaving! We got on the bus anyway and on the way I sent my dad a text finding out if the plane was delayed only to find out it was also CANCELLED! Ok I figured we'd just get the next one out. The airport was a disaster, there were no BA people anywhere, and we got different stories from everyone we talked to about what we should do. When I called BA they said they wouldn't be able to get us out till sunday!!! I was rather frazzled and terribly traumatised and couldn't think what to do. They didn't offer to put us on a different airline even though there was an easy jet going to gatwick with space on it! We ended up buying seats at twice the original cost of our holiday in order to make it home! I was (and still am) very upset and traumatised. Today I am going to have to spend much time on the phone to BA and lastminute to try and sort out getting some sort of refund. I am VERY unhappy about it all. Which is a shame as until then it had been a lovely trip!!!!

At least Floyd was happy to see us when we came home!

Florence pictures Day 1

Bill has posted pictures from the first day of our trip on his LJ here
http://beluosus.livejournal.com/193792.html#cutid1