Living museums in Florence and Cinque Terre

Over stimulation is about the best way to describe that last week or so.  Florence in indeed a living museum of people, art, fantastic buildings and fashion.  The museums contain great works of art and sculpture and the "entertainment" in the streets is equally fascinating. The rooms we have been staying in have been very comfortable, but cramped.  We are constantly strolling around so time in the rooms is very limited during the day.  Florence is a place that needs to be visited more than once to appreciate.  Being there near Easter adds an extra element to the city... same thing for the Cinque Terre area.  Our arrival on Thursday was perfectly timed, as we were able to get settled in and prepare for our coastline hike from Monterosso to Riomaggiore. That hike occurred on Friday in bluebird sky conditions.  No words can describe our adventure, so I won't try.  Spring is about to spring here along the coast so many of our photos are of flowering vegetation...that's the naturalist in both Bob and I.  Bob claim not to have taken more than a few photos in his life...on this trip he is up to about 500!  Tomorrow we head to Venice via the train.  We go from Monterroso to La Spezia to Bolognia to Venice...through the mountains, hooray!  Oh, I did finally go for a "brief" swim...Bob photo documented the chilling event.  The weather here on the coast has been pleasantly cool, but I'm disappointed because I was counting on lots of beach time here in Cinque Terre...I'll just have to come back!  Enough for now...we're headed off to dinner.  Oh, the Paris Marathon is next Sunday...can't wait for that.  Ciao!

P.S. I'm working on an Apple computer here at Hotel Pasquale, which is a first.  I couldn't tell which photos I would be uploading so I randomly selected some jpegs to upload ... surprise and enjoy!