Final Europe trip, Post 3: Fabulous Florence

On Monday we set off from Venice to Florence (Firenze in Italian) in our hire car. We had lunch in some random town along the way, sheltering from the pouring rain and eating delicious pasta dishes that became some of our favourite meals on the trip.

When we reached Florence, where none of us had ever been before, we discovered that our accommodation for the next two nights - a 3-bed house tent at Camping Michelangelo - was on the side of a hill overlooking the beautiful city of Florence, and right next to the Piazzale Michelangelo, where one of the copies of Michelangelo's statue of David is (Florence is home to one other copy and the original). The first photo below shows our house tent and hire car, the second photo shows our campsite from the Piazzale Michelangelo (it's hidden under all the trees), and the third and fourth photos show the view of Florence from the Piazzale, and David.



That evening we wandered around the centre of Florence, an absolutely gorgeous city with lots of bridges, lots of scooters and motorbikes, and lots of elaborate gelati displays (see photos below). We were a little sad to discover that gelati had been much cheaper in Venice though (but we still ate some). We also saw quite a lot of small electric city buses, and even an electric three-wheeled one-seater car charging in a carpark (yellow one in photo below)!



There was a square in the city centre where there were a lot of statues, including the other copy of David and a Neptune. We think this was outside the museum where the real David is, which we didn't see. In another part of the city, across from the river in what we've just discovered was the courtyard between the Uffizi Gallery's two wings (thanks Wikipedia!), Ben was quite excited to find a statue of Machiavelli.



One of the things we loved about Florence was the Ponte Vecchio (meaning "old bridge" in Italian). This is a bridge with shops along both sides of it (mostly jewellers, souvenir shops and art dealers these days), and from the outside you can see that the shops jut out from the base of the bridge a little, and are supported by steel rods. Here are some photos of the bridge from various angles (the last photo is of the sunset as seen from the Ponte Vecchio this first night)...



We crossed the bridge a few times that night and the next day, and on this first night the centre of the bridge was occupied by a guitar-playing busker who had quite a sizeable audience gathered on both sides of the bridge, enjoying his songs and taking photos of the magnificent sunset. There is a gap in the shops on both sides of the bridge at the centre, making for a lovely view of the river in both directions, and a brilliant spot for a concert!! We listened to him for a while and bought his CD. Check out the photos and video below!

That night we had scrumptious pizzas for tea, and experimented with various camera settings to get some night shots of Florence on our way back up the hill to Camping Michelangelo. Check out the awesome night view from the Piazzale Michelangelo (fifth photo below)...



I think I've unintentionally toned down my raving about places in blog entries over the last year :P, but Florence is truly beautiful... interesting architecture, lots of culture, great shopping, wonderful food, and friendly locals. On one of our nights in Florence, a very old and small Italian lady, who spoke only a little English, saw Ben lift me down from a wall and stopped to call him a gentleman and wish us a nice holiday. :) Florence was the perfect place to visit in between seeing Venice and Pisa (our next destination), which are both very comercialised and feel as though they would be almost empty if all the tourists were to disappear.

Anyway, I was going to write about the next day now as well, but this entry is already quite long, so more next time! :) Bye for now!

Final Europe trip, Post 2: Venice by day

Continuing on from the second last post, the next day we headed back to Venice on the ferry for our full day of sightseeing. It was a beautiful sunny day and we spent it wandering fairly aimlessly, shopping for souvenirs, eating gelati, and doing a walking tour with a bunch of other tourists and a nice, short Italian lady who held an orange scarf aloft on a stick so we could find her in the crowd. :)

The tour took a couple of hours and included going through the famous Basilica di San Marco (St Mark's Basilica), which has amazing mosaics both outside and inside, and a rather uneven marble floor (photos not allowed inside). We also saw the Bridge of Sighs, the Rialto Bridge, and of course lots of alleyways, canals, bridges, and gondolas...



This was the second time Ben and I had been to Venice (the first time was during our 2006 trip), and I definitely enjoyed it more this time (last time we couldn't even find the start of the walking tour despite having already paid for it!), but Venice is still Venice... beautiful, old, amazing and colourful... and very touristy! Delle found it amusing that the reasons for Venice being such a unique and famous destination also mean it is a completely impractical place to live... eg. no roads or cars on most of the island, daily garbage collections done by boat etc!

The next day, we picked up our hire car (that was an experience in itself for Ben...!) and set off for our next destination, one that was to become a highlight for us all: Florence, Italy. And until the next entry, goodbye!

Tim and Chany's Wedding!

Well, the big day is all over and Tim and Chany are now wed!! For the benefit of our foreign friends and any others who don't know the newlyweds, I thought I'd include some photos of the event we came home for. :)

The bride and groom are good friends with us both; Tim was the best man at our wedding, and Chantelle, along with her younger sister, Andreana, was one of Roxy's and my "adopted little sisters" when we lived in Bundaberg. Dreana was Chany's bridesmaid and the best man was Tim's younger brother, Wes.

It was an absolutely beautiful day and SO special to be there with the ecstatic newlyweds and many of our nearest and dearest, in my old hometown! The rest of the weekend was wonderful too - staying up late with the girls the night before the wedding, relaxing at the beach at Bargara afterwards, spending time at Woodgate with my parents, a large group picnic in the park for Sunday lunch, and road tripping with friends. :D Enjoy!

Final Europe trip, Post 1: Bruges, and Venice by night

I can't believe it's September and I'm about to start telling you what we did in the middle of July! Anyway, it was a trip full of enough awesome experiences and hilarious mishaps that I can't NOT write about it. So here goes...

On Friday 18th July, Ben and I each worked the last day of our English jobs, moved out of the flat we'd called home for the past year, and headed across to Europe with Delle. We took the EuroTunnel, which was a very exciting experience for Delle (and us, although we'd done it before) - sitting in our car, inside a huge train that is travelling under the ocean floor of the English Channel!

After popping up in France, we drove to Bruges in Belgium, where our night's accommodation would be at the same place where Ben and I stayed on the first night of our Christmas Europe trip - the Art Hostel. After a bit of mucking around trying to get some Euros out of an ATM vestibule that was closed for the night (if you add up all the things we fit into this one day, you will realise it was quite late by this time!), we sent Ben off on a drive to find a more agreeable machine while Delle and I set off down the street, bearing all three peoples' luggage, to find our accommodation.

It was actually a different building to last time, further down the street, but managed by the same people. After some effort I managed to unlock the front door. We then had to ascend a few flights of a treacherous and narrow staircase whilst loaded up with large suitcases; however, you'll be pleased to hear that Delle made it to the top with a pillow being the only item to plummet screaming to the bottom. Then, at the top of the stairs, before we even reached our cosy attic dorm, the first and only fellow resident we met at this hostel was a guy from... Ipswich, Australia. I kid you not.

The next day, Saturday, we grabbed some yummy breakfast from a bakery and set off on the 4 hour drive to Frankfurt Hahn Airport in Germany, where we would leave our car and fly with RyanAir to Italy for 5 days of sightseeing. We ended up being in a enormous rush at the end of the trip, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding about how much time we could afford for lunch, but suffice to say we did make it.

We flew into Treviso Airport in Italy, which is RyanAir's "Venice" airport but in typical RyanAir style is actually at least an hour from Venice. With all our luggage and no Italian, getting from Treviso to our campsite at Fusina was our next significant challenge. We managed to catch a coach that took us to Mestre, half an hour away, where we were told we could then catch a local bus to Fusina. This was a fabulous theory, but what ended up happening was that each local bus we tried to get on would send us back to the other side of the road, dragging all our luggage, to wait for the next bus travelling in the opposite direction.

Eventually we got sick of never being allowed on a bus, and split a taxi to take us the rest of the way. :) Our campsite, called Camping Fusina, was across the water from the island of Venice, and is the same place that the eight of us stayed on our 2006 Europe trip - definitely recommended as the place to stay if you go to Venice. We had two 2-bed cabins between the three of us - even with their 3-bed cabins unavailable, paying for the extra bed was still cheaper than any other accommodation I could find - and we already knew the facilities, atmosphere and location were great. Check out the pics below (last one is of our breakfast the next two days)!



That evening we headed across to Venice. It's magical at night, coming in by ferry and seeing the round golden lanterns glowing along the water's edge. We quickly got into the gelati - yum yum YUM!!! - and wandered the streets looking at the amazing old buildings, watching the gondolas glide silently along the canals, and gazing at lit window displays of elaborate Venetian masks and other local specialties. Here are some photos taken that night...



It also turned out that Venice was celebrating their Festival of the Redeemer that night, so at the end of the evening we were treated to a spectacular fireworks display, which we watched from the big open bridge (Ponte dell'Accademia) over the Grand Canal. The crowds were unbelievable. Check out this fireworks video - YouTube makes it much blurrier than the original, but hopefully you can see the ones that spread outwards in golden spirals after they explode - awesome!

The next day we went back and enjoyed Venice in daylight, but I'll save that for the next entry. :) Goodnight!