Italy April 2024, Florence

Honestly, nothing could have prepared me for seeing Venice in person. The engineering accomplishment of all the stone buildings propped up by petrified logs in a lagoon is just mind boggling. The city is larger than expected and just an endless maze of canals and alleys, it did live up to it’s reputation of being such a unique place. I loved it! We stayed a little north of Venice in Mogliano Veneto, the train is regular, but does end a little early around midnight. The first night we had a mad scramble through the alleys and bridges to make it…

We didn’t stay in Bologna city center, we rented an AirBnB about 40 minutes outside the city on a hill in the countryside and I rented a car. Hertz doesn’t care if you have an international driver’s permit, but the police do, so I got mine before the trip. The funny thing is that we saw one of the Lamborghini police cars the day we arrived in Bologna and that was a fun sight. One for the bucket list – driving in Italy. This isn’t much different than Boston or New York, so easy enough. Bologna was interesting and nice…

Do I have too many pictures of pizza? No! Florence quite a fun destination, yes, there are a lot of tourists, but the city can handle it and there are a lot of great shops and restaurants. By dumb luck we discovered Giovanni Santarpia’s pizzeria outside the city center, rated as one of the best pizzerias in Italy, and we managed to get a table, just amazing and fun. Looking forward to going back to Florence, what a fun city with amazing food!