Florence, sigh! Honestly you could spend a thousand days in that city and not regret a single one. Beautiful streets packed with ancient building, tick, magnificent squares with art on every corner, tick, fascinating history, tick, pizza, pasta and gelato coming out of your ears, tick. We spent out two days exploring the city on foot and, joy of all joys, our very reasonable hotel room had the most stunning view of the Duomo. We thoroughly enjoyed it, daytime, li...

Our arrival into Italy was rather eventful. A long day of hoping on and off trains and a truly bizarre Argos like system at Milan station left us thoroughly relieved to actually arrive in Venice. As it happened we were on a waterbus, or vaperetto to those in the know, by the time the sun was going down. This gave us a stunning trip up the grand canal to the island where were we staying when it was at its magical best. Knowing that Venice is a tourist mecca, it h...

What a whirlwind four days in France it has been! We are now safely on board a train to Milan where we will hopefully connect to Venice and begin stuffing our faces with as much pizza and pasta as possible. We had our first major delay today, amusingly mistaking an announcement that our train was cancelled for telling us our train was superior. Lost in translation!! And what of France? We began in Perpignan which was absolutely delightful. Just an hour and a hal...

Well, we left Spain in style! Barcelona was buzzy and super cool, just like I expected in would be. We started off with a bus tour of Gaudi's famous sites before lunch on Barceloneta beach. That has got to be one of the major perks of this city, beautiful sandy beaches within ten minutes of the main town. The food was wonderful and a glass of wine over looking the sparkly blue sea was a major highlight. The afternoon brought more sight seeing, Barcelona is packe...

Ooh Andalucia, it is all rather lovely! The jewel in the crown for me was Granada. Not only was it utterly surprising and intriguing but also unlike any other place I have ever been. We stayed in a traditional Andalucian house set around a court yard quite like the one we stayed in in Seville but in Granada we were slap bang in the middle of the Arabic Quarter. The Moorish Alhambra loomed in the background and the new city sprawled out below. The quarter itself w...