Florence

We had a blip when we first arrived in Florence. It was pouring with rain, and the hotel owner informs me that he accidentally overbooked and transferred our booking to another place on the other side of town. We were planning on visiting David at the Galleria dell'Accademia but had tried and failed both online and by phone to make a booking. Apparently the queue can reach five hours if you don't have a booking at this time of year, so when the hotel was mucking us around we were getting quite worried about missing it altogether.

As luck would have it, the rain was our salvation. 

Paul ran off to the Accademia to wait in the queue while I figured out the hotel. Which, I should mention, involved carrying all our stuff up three very steep flights of stairs. It'd be fine to do one load, but as I didn't want to let any of our stuff out of my sight I had to do it bit by bit which took a very long time. Anyway, whinge over: the rain scared off half the queue at the gallery and it only took an hour, giving me plenty of time to arrive, and us plenty of time to appreciate David before closing.

The most captivating artwork I have ever experienced.

On the way home we had the most delicious cannelloni I've ever tasted. Well, I haven't had cannelloni very much. But it was good. The next morning, the rain had disappeared and we were able to experience the sights of Florence with a brilliant blue backdrop.

We spent an hour or two at the Uffizi Gallery before continuing on to Siena at about midday.