As seafood lovers go, I would consider myself to be a part time lover. There are a number of dishes that I am sweet on, but only one or two of them have my heart. Tamara on the other hand is a seafood connoisseur. She is far more adventurous than I could ever be. While she looks forward to eating things like octopus ink pasta, I just find it hard to look at.
We chose churches, aka – Chiesa, Cattedrale, Duomo, Basilica for our first top ten list because they are the central attraction of any city, town or village throughout Italy. You’ll be hard pressed to pass by these magnificent symbols of faith without taking at least one sneak peak inside. The need to see what lies behind their impressive doors is hard to ignore.
A beautiful thing about these churches is that they are welcoming to all travellers regardless of your own personal faith. All that is required is for visitors to be respectful while they are inside and to speak softly since there are many who have come to worship.
In fact, it wasn’t on my list at all. I’ll let you in on a little something about myself. It’s been said, at times I may be guilty of prejudging before really giving things their fair chance. Not always, but in the case of travelling to Venice, it happens to be true. Let me explain myself.
Go ahead, google cats. I did… 665,000,000 results!!! That my friends is a staggering amount of cat chat going on. If each one of those results were a 2″ long coughed up hairball, they would circle the globe 383 or so times laid end to end.
With that image in your head, our post “Cats of Italy” is going to be number 665,000,001.
Alright I’ll come clean… I love gelato. Or maybe I should say “I love eating gelato in Italy.” The ritual of going on an evening stroll along one of the shop lined via’s is one of my favorite ways to wind up the day. Gelato is also a great way to deal with the mid day heat. Oh sure, you may think that’s just a quick way to pack on the pounds but truth be told, after all the walking we do sightseeing, we have yet to gain weight. Now if we could only keep it up at home we’d be doing great.
I applaud your confidence but worry about your decision! Now, I realize you may be a great driver at home wherever that may be. But… driving in many of the bigger Italian centers is in a word, Crazy.
Now that you have decided a trip to the Italian peninsula to walk with the Romans is in your future, it’s time to choose the places you want to see. It may seem like that would be an easy thing to do. Not so much! There are just so many sights and not enough time for you to see everything.
Florence for us is really two cities. Florence of 2011 and Florence of 2015. I’ll stop talking in riddles now and fill you in on the details.
