Off to the Cinque Terre today. We were up and out on the street at 9:15 am expecting our taxi for 9:30, we waited ........ and waited .......no taxi. Michele the owner of our apartment had arranged our pick up to take us to the train station. So after 45 minutes or so I called one myself, it arrived in 7 minutes. Yay! Should have done that in the first place. We arrived at a very busy station, the Santa Maria Novella. A neat 30's building in the early Mussolini ...

Ok Ok I know I'm a little behind on my blog. I'm having some trouble with this program and twice I've had a fully written entry and twice I've hit the"publish" button and poof, it disappears! Very frustrating. So, I'm going to post a bit at a time and will keep adding to this entry. Ok here goes On Saturday we headed off to see the Palazzo Pitti, an enormous residence not too far from us. Built by wealthy Florentine banker Luca Pitti, his family hung out there f...