We are almost on our way home!  Tomorrow night around midnight we will be off to the airport to catch our very early morning flight to Amsterdam, sit and wait four hours and then a nine-hour flight to Vancouver. We are getting very excited!

The last two days have been very laid back with last minute shopping, snapping a few more pictures and taking one more trip to the Ponte Vecchio Bridge which is my favourite spot to be. We walk the river roads so we can be in the sunshine on the now, very cool mornings. We are running out of streets to walk down but still get our steps in each day.  Every weekend there is a huge outdoor market but each week it is diminishing in size and today there were hardly any vendors present.  We commented that it must be getting to the end of the season for tourists.  That was until we got to our favourite piazza and it was teaming with people.  No lack of tourists there!  We figured they had been sleeping in until it warmed up.

We have our cupboards and fridge down to nothing now so the next two days we will be dining out. There are many restaurants and cafes to choose from, so we won’t have any trouble finding something.

I did find an Apple store in my travels today. I had been down that street before but hadn’t seen it.  We are usually so busy watching the road beneath us for dips and holes and rough cobblestone to trip on, that we miss a lot of scenery. I went in for a few minutes and took a look at the products.  The store was just as busy as the ones at home.  It was fun to be there.

Well, time to wind down now.  It’s been a wonderful trip filled with many memories to last a lifetime.We laughed a lot and met a few problems along the way that we overcame…to be expected when travelling. We saw sites that were breathtaking and we saw sites that were disappointing. We met some wonderful people and we met some that we choose to forget. We tasted some wonderful food and left some food on our plates that we couldn’t bring ourselves to try. We had the best place to stay in while in Spain (except the dreaded stairs) and we had a place in Florence that didn’t offer all the amenities with a few surprises… but no stairs. Our hosts in both places were great to deal with and made our stays memorable.  Happy hours were an almost everyday occurrence and I think Joey ate more potato chips and chocolate in the last two months that she has in the last two years!  She’s an addict now. She even runs out and gets snacks if we’re low!  I’ve taught her well. We heard beautiful music and we heard the constant sound of traffic.  We had nights of sound sleep and we had sleepless nights. We had fun using our very limited Italian and Spanish and we had fun trying to figure out what the Spanish and Italians were trying to say to us.  The smells that we encountered were either very very good or extremely bad and forgettable.

All in all, a wonderful experience that I got to share with a wonderful friend.  Thanks Joey for the memories.