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Happy New Year to all!  We wish you the very best for 2018!

Ian finally got his act together and all of our pictures from our time together in Europe are now on the website.  Head on over to the Europe 2017 gallery and check out the pictures from our anniversary trip to Florence and our weekend in Vienna!

This post is out of order and about a month late, but I guess that is how life is sometimes 🙂

We decided to spend our first anniversary in Florence.  I had been there in 2014 and loved it, and I really wanted to share that with Christine.  We arrived on Friday evening and took the bus from the airport to the main train station.  From there it was a reasonable enough walk to the apartment that we had rented for the weekend.  Our apartment was right near the river and in a rather old building.  How old?  I don’t know, OLD.  But really awesome.  We couldn’t figure out how to get the code on the elevator to work, so we walked up to the top story.  The staircase was built into the walls of the central atrium, and was somewhat terrifying.  At that point, we resolved to make the elevator work, because…yikes

Our trip to Florence was about food, architecture, art, and churches (yes churches are technically covered by architecture and art).  The Bascilica of Santa Croce was right near our apartment and, while smaller than the main Cathedral, is never the less quite spectacular.  Floods throughout the course of time have left their mark on the church and the tombs of some of the famous people buried there (Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli for instance).  The wooden ceilings are extremely ornate and there is even a leather working academy on the church grounds.  It was really cool to see the apprentice leather workers learning the craft from the masters.

The Duomo, or main Cathedral compound in the center of the city is pretty stupendous.  The cathedral itself sits on the ruins of a much smaller church who’s mosaic floors date back to Roman times.  The “new” cathedral is much larger, and special machines (cranes) were invented by the architect (Brunelleschi) for its construction.  As huge as this cathedral is, you could still fit roughly five of them inside St. Peter’s!  By comparison to other churches, the inside is relatively understated, aside from the depiction of the Last Judgement on the inside of the copula – that is pretty impressive!  The bell tower stands almost 300 feet tall and you can climb to the top.  It was pretty windy when we were up there, so it was a little exciting, especially for someone who has no love of heights.  The final building is the Baptistery of St. John.  This is an interesting remnant from a time that you could not enter a Catholic church unless you were baptized.  The ceiling of the octagonal chapel is covered in gold mosaics depicting the lives of Jesus and St. John.  The whole building glows – it’s really pretty.  The doors of the Baptistery are also famous for their elaborate sculptures depicting scenes from the Old and New Testament.

Our final artsy stop was the Gallery of the Academy of Florence, home of Michelangelo’s David.  There are many works of art in the Gallery, for it is a huge space, but for me, the musical instruments are the most intriguing.  They have a collection of Amanti and Stradivari cellos, violins, and violas that are so beautiful.  Sadly playing them is completely out of the question.  Of course, I think that Michelangelo was the most brilliant sculptor to have ever created – I could honestly sit and look at the Pieta for hours…  That said, the David is impressive, from the incredible detail of the veins in his throwing arm to the fact that his proportions are such that he would seem to scale when placed on top of a cathedral (where he was originally intended to be).  I have to say though, that I may be a little jealous, because all the squats in the world (or at least the ones that I am willing to do) will never give me a butt like that.  All kidding aside, it is a great museum!

Food!  Pizza, gelato, pastries, pasta, meat, coffee, wine!  We were there at the end of the summer, but the pesto gnocchi at the Osteria dei Pazzi, were really great – so much basil and garlic!  We had gelato at a little store (La Strega Nicciola), where the proprietor was sure to know that he had the 2^nd best gelato shop in Florence, I think that he was being modest.  We had a melted cheese and truffle appetizer at Trattoria Diladdarno that was to die for!  And to be honest, you pretty much can’t go wrong with the wine – you are in Tuscany after all!  My favorite food experience was on Sunday when we stashed our bags at a baggage storage center (make sure you research these a bit first, we did, but we read some great stories of extortion from other vendors) and headed for the Mercato Centrale.  The whole upper story is dedicated to food.  There is a cooking school that we have on our list for the next trip.  They sell these fried cones of rice and vegetables that are really good.  For lunch/dinner we sat and the wine bar and let them make suggestions for us while we ate our fill of crostinis and cheese.  I just wanted a few more pieces of Parmesan, and they gave us about a half-kilo, it was awesome.

Two days in Florence is not enough to remotely do it justice, but it was a great return for me and introduction for Christine.  We will return!