WhatNow?
Mom
Member since 12/02 2201 total posts
Wedding Date:
3/16/2003 5:30 PM
Wed. Location:
Milleridge Inn
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Finally, review of our Italian Honeymoon: part 2 (long, with pictures)!
Florence was by far my favorite city out of the whole trip! It is absolutely beautiful in a very welcoming, warm and charming way! Everything is very cozy and charming, smaller in scale then Rome or Perugia! Florence is definitely a total opposite of Rome in architecture style and mood! We stayed in Pitti Palace Hotel, which I definitely recommend to everyone!
It's a 3 star hotel right in the heart of the city, with great breakfast, very cozy and perfectly nice, even though not luxurious room, but very reasonably priced! Maid service was excellent, and the hotel made reservations for us in the Ufizzi gallery, which is a must! If you are in Florence, make sure your hotel does it for you, or better yet, make it from US. We only got reservations for 2 days after we arrived! Thank god for that, we didn't have to wait in line which was ENORMOUS, at least 4 hours, so make those reservations!
Uffizi is a great museum holding some incredible pieces of art, but I liked Pitti palace the best! Their painting collection is much more valuable and hold more important pieces of work! Most of more renowned work of renaissance artists is in Pitti palace! I am so glad we decided to go! Boboli garden is wonderful and is right behind Pitti palace, but you have to buy a separate ticket, well worth it, though! The food in Florence is delicious, cuisine is very different from Roman! We went to a great restaurant called "Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco" 3 nights in a row, it was right by Pitti Palace Hotel and right by Old Bridge! If you are planning on travelling through the country make sure you have at least 3 days to spend in Florence! We were there for 3 days, but that wasn't enough! I would love to go back and spend there at least a week! There was so much we didn't get to see!
Next was Verona! Very small town, but charming! It’s very small, so everything is within walking distance. We stayed in the famous Due Torri Hotel Baglioni, which is where all the celebrity stay during Verona music festival (so I was told), but I think that hotel had better days. It wasn’t worth the price, because the bed was uncomfortable and the room was small, but the breakfast was included and it was very-very good and we got champagne and fruit on arrival, and that was nice!
Verona has a lot of very old churches, some dating back to 8th century, and all of them very different from each other! Most of them charge a fee for a visit, but you can a buy a ticket in anyone of them that coves all 11 major cathedrals of the town. Then while you walking, you can just pop in to anyone of them with that ticket! We did that and it was very convenient, and definitely worth seeing! Piazza Signioria was my favorite point in Verona! it’s surrounded by all the major houses of the town: major’s former residence, city Hall, etc with Dante’s statue in the middle! If you re facing the statue, on the right of you, a little off the square is a medieval burial of former Verona ruler Conrad (I think)! You have to look at it at night, though! Its very impressive, and even kind of spooky, but an absolutely beautiful work of art nevertheless!
Food tip: if you are facing Dante, there are 2 restaurants/pizzerias on the left of you. Both have very, VERY good food and the best pizza in Italy, I swear! BTW, horse meat is popular in local restaurants, so be careful what you order (unless you like horse meat, of course).
Our last stop was Venice.
We stayed at the Londra Palace Hotel, which was so NOT worth the money! The service was bad, they were doing some renovations on our floor and it smelled like paint every morning, and one evening at 11pm we got a visit from a very scared porter saying that people on the floor under us got flooded and he needs to check our bathroom floor! There was nothing going on in our bathroom, our floor was dry, but we were both in bed by that time, and even though there was no honeymoon action going on, but still...
We went on a special tour of the Dodges palace, for which you have to make reservations. It was very interesting, they take you on a tour of room where you can't go as a regular visitor, you get to see the prisons, and the room that Casanova escaped from! Venice is very beautiful and very different from the rest of the country. One problem was that for about 4 hours a day, from 3 to 7pm ALL cafes and restaurants are closed! Keep that in mind when you are planning your day! We actually arrived in Venice at 5, starving and had to go to a supermarket and buy bread and cold cuts to make sandwiches in our hotel room! It was actually fun and they were actually very good sandwiches! We went to Murano Island famous for the Venitian glass. Our hotel arranged a water taxi for us which was free, but they do expect you to buy something at the Marco Polo factory, where we were taken. It's one of 3 famous glass manufacturers, and I am sure they have a deal with the hotel and the taxi driver. We actually bought something there, but I am not sure if it the ride would have been free if we didn't! Venice is a great city to explore, to just walk around, going into little shops, stopping on cute bridges! We didn't go on a gondola ride, even though it was a very honeymoony thing to do! It was too cold and too expensive!
Overall, it was a great trip, (even though DH got a bad cold in Rome) but we were very tired at the end and really happy to get home! Hope this helped someone in their planning!
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Message edited 5/29/2003 12:15:12 PM.
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