Ciao Montepulciano we are off to Florence, Italy - The City of Art

It's been a couple of days since my last post. 

We woke up and checked out of our Airbnb (sigh) and set out for some breakfast and some shopping before we head out. We came upon some old churches, and I don't know about you, but I am in love with taking pictures of doors! Italy has THE BEST doors around! I am obsessed!!!

We absolutely loved Caffe Poliziano. They had the best cappuccino and breakfast. 

Ahh....cappuccino. 💕


Beautiful painting of the Montepulciano sunset - pretty accurate.


They had China cabinets full of espresso cups from each decade. I forgot to take note which decade this was from, but I liked these the most.












We had to say goodbye to Montepulciano.....We drove from Montepulciano to Florence, and it was a beautiful drive. I must confess, John has done all the driving for a couple of reasons...1. It is absolutely insane driving in Italy and 2. I could not see over the dashboard. 😏 If you are in Italy and you wonder if you should rent a car, it depends on where you are going. Some places, we simply did not need it, some places we did, regardless, it does allow you the freedom. 

We did make a quick pit stop in San Gimignano for some famous gelato. 




San Gimignano is a beautiful small town about an hour from Montepulciano. These little towns all have these forts and piazzas (public squares) right in the middle. The narrow "streets" that are only used for pedestrians, no cars. The cars are parked outside of the city walls, and you must walk to it.  








We arrived in Florence (Firenze as the Italians call it) on Tuesday (I actually typed Thursday, and my husband was like, "When did we arrive in Florence??" What day is it?? Oh, today is Thursday...). We checked into our hotel - Hotel Glance and then we dropped off our car. Bye bye Fiat....Time for other forms of transportation!

Our hotel was awesome!  The room wasn't fancy or anything, it had air conditioning and that is what mattered because truly, it has been so incredibly hot here since we have begun our journey. It is hard to believe that we are almost at the end. 😢😢😢

One major plus is that our hotel did have a rooftop pool! We utilized this every chance we had! Stunning views from the top and a bar too! Boy did we need this - it was freaking HOT!!! The hospitality here was incredible. It also included breakfast every morning! Yum.






Florence was way different than I had thought. It is a very diverse place, a bustling city, but even different than Rome. We almost didn't feel like we were in Italy. 

I will post more about our tour that we took in Florence...stay tuned.

Until then...

XOXO,

Claudine


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