We have had a lovely two days in Siena. But first we stopped in Montoriggioni (this blog's picture), a Sienese fortified town to defend against the Florentines. It sits a top a hill and looks very striking as you drive up. Today is houses little shops, restaurants and great views of Tuscan countryside. It is a very cute and picturesque place and a great side trip chosen by Tom. In Siena we are not in the centre of town this time, but have stunning views of the r...

Florence has been a busy few days. We have stayed just one street away from the Santa Croce, a church and public square, which it turns out is the main leather district - much to Mum's delight. So after navigating car parking and the killer stairs up to our apartment with all the luggage we set out to explore these shops and get our bearings. Yesterday morning Mum and I were out again delving further into the leather shops while Tom and Dad visited the Ponte Vec...

Yesterday we arrived for our night in Venice and had the perfect entrance by ferry up the Grand Canal to Piazza San Marco. After making it to our hotel through swarms of pigeons in the Piazza (much to Mum's delight) we wandered the small streets of the San Marco area over to the Rialto Bridge. Our room looked over a lovely little canal and it was fascinating to watch how they move people, food and building materials around the place on boats, gondolas and weird...

On Saturday after a mammoth and stressful day of driving we arrived in the beautiful Menaggio on the gorgeous Lake Como! We chose to drive through Switzerland rather than France on our way to Italy and this turned out to be quite the wrong decision. Instead of being the fastest route, we ended up in a huge traffic jam outside and all around Luzern where we only moved 6km in nearly 2 hours! Luckily we found an alternate route, arriving only 4 hours later than plan...

Today we made a day trip to Lyon. The weather was perfect and we spent our day finding food markets and wandering around the heart of the city. First we went to the Saint Antoine street market that has made us very jealous as it is open Tuesday to Sunday with delicious food that the locals clearly make great use of. After lunch we headed up to the Notre Dame Basilica on a huge hill in the middle of the city. We could really get a feel for just how big Lyon is....