Florence

The largest building in Florence is called the Duomo which is I guess Italian for dome. This is the front of it and you can see it’s dome and gold ball in many of the cityscape photos.

 

It is what else, but a church of which there are huge Basilica practically on every corner.

This is obviously a of the river with just a little piece of the Ponte Vecchio  bridge on the left.

A market on one of the narrow streets.

   

This is an evening view of one of the several bridges in the city.       

 

A typical street lined with open air eateries. 

Some streets are quite narrow and a few are wide.

A view of the city from a vista point. That dome shaped building is, yep, the Duomo.

This is a full view of the Ponte Vecchio bridge from the vista point. The bridge is famous because it has stores right on it.  Connie even help support the economy there today.

There is really no shortage of motor scooters here and they park them so nicely.

A store window display on the bridge.

This is typical pavement on many of the streets here.

Who said it’s not as crowded at this time of the year?

There is plenty of merchandise for all though and you can bet there is a church handy if you need one.

Tuscany

  

Today we took a tour of Tuscany. Just 6 people our tour guide, a young American girl who is studying here and a driver. We started in San Gimignano.

This place is incredible. It’s like a trip back in time.

Narrow streets full of shops and buildings that are hundreds of years old.

We were completely amazed by this whole new world.

We tried hard to capture it with our cameras but like they say, “you had to be there”.

Scenes are the exception, they are the norm.

What else can I say but that we loved every minute of it.

Then we had lunch and wine tasting at a small vineyard just a short distance away with and incredible view of the town in the distance.

The Grapes are ready to harvest.

The scenery was spectacular.

The only thing I didn’t enjoy was the wine but everyone else liked it and the food was wonderful.

Then we stop at an even smaller town on a hill with a wall all around but I’m sorry I don’t remember the name.

Then we spent a couple of hours in Siena.  It has more shops more churches and more narrow streets.

It also has a Duomo like Florence and I suggest you click on the photo to view the larger size so you can see some of the detail on the front of this building.

This is what most of the town looks like.

It is so much fun to just wander these small street taking the sites and sounds. You can imagine that you are in some other time in history.

This is the square in the center of town with the top of the Duomo behind.

And oh, did I mention that we had a wonderful day?

Our Last Day in Rome

These are some of the photos from our last day in Rome. This is a fountain I took from the open top bus. I don’t know the name but that is supposed to be Moses.

This is of course the Trevi fountain where everyone throws in a coin and makes a wish or something like that. They say that people throw in $3500 of coins each day.

This is inside the Vatican museum. We walled down miles of halls with ceilings like this before getting to the Sistine Chapel. Then, no pictures allowed in there.

More art work on the walls at the Vatican.

Looking down the exit stairs on our way out. Yes, that’s Connie and Cheryl half way down.

Now I’m looking back up the same stairway.

The churches in Rome are to numerous to be able to tell you which ones your looking at here. They all have very long names too.

There is obviously no shortage of pillars here.  I think maybe this is the birthplace of the pillar or at least they made them stylish.

What else but the ceiling in yet another church.

This is inside the Pantheon.

This is the front of the Pantheon but unfortunately many of the iconic places that we wanted to photograph were being repaired.

Yep, we ran across another cool church or Basilica as they’re called. Our Italian guide pronounced it Bazilica.

It never hurts to have the moon hanging around for you shots.

Ancient Rome

 

Due to a need for sleep, I am going keep the text very short on text but long on photos.

These are of the Coliseum built around 80 A.D. The one below I did in black and white.

Inside the Coliseum.

Brick work in the Coliseum.

Roman soldiers are happy to pose for pictures.

More Coliseum.

This statue of Moses was done by Michael Angelo.

Ruins of an old church.

Ruins of ancient Rome and the Forum.

Ruins of and ancient church.

More ruins.

Yep, more ruins.

Rome!!!

Well we made it to Rome and Dave and Cheryl arrived about 3 hours later. We haven’t got a chance to do much sightseeing yet.  Getting here requires a little effort. As I write this I’ve been up for 29 hours  with only some cat naps on the Plane.

We have only had one meal and some Gelato so far but it’s all good! Here is a real pizzeria right near our hotel. One euro per slice.

Dave and Cheryl crashed when they got here but I think their flight was longer than ours. Connie and I checked out the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore that is a few blocks from our hotel.

It’s pretty hard to describe these places. I’ll just let you look at the pictures or you’ll have to zip on over here.

You could spend hours in one church and not see all of the detail.

Don’t forget to click on these photos to see more detail.

I don’t know the history of this place yet but you could look it up.

Even the streets here are interesting. Many of them are all brick.  Tomorrow we tour the ancient part of town so hopefully I’ll get some good stuff there. Now say goodnight Tom….goodnight.

Next Up… Italy

Stand by for pictures from Rome, Florence and Venice. If I can find time and the connection I’ll start posting our photos from Italy on Tuesday September 14. I’m pretty sure there’s no shortage of things to photograph there.