Florence 2

*Hotel Bar. We ended up staying at a great place and would HIGHLY recommend Hotel Monna Lisa in Florence. It felt like staying in someone elses villa.

The perfect place for a spritz- Campari, white wine, seltzer.

*Santa Maria Novella

*The Duomo

*Baptistry Doors

Florence

*Mosaic on the Baptistry ceiling

*View from the top of the Duomo. We climbed up the 400 some stairs behind a German family who stopped to take pictures about every 10 feet. They probably ended up with 100 pictures of Jake and I looking grumpy in the background.

*stone design in Medici courtyard

*Music room of the Medici residence. The floors were recently painted to exactly mirror the ceiling. The walls were covered in painted mirrors. We had to wear little blue booties!

Rome Cont.

*St. Paul's Outside the Wall. George Eliot thought it was a shame that such a display of beauty and wealth was in such a remote location.

*this pyramid looms over the part of the cemetery where Keats is buried

*nearby epitaph to Keats

*Keats' grave

Rome

*Jake and I visited Rome's Non-Catholic cemetery. This gorgeous monument was designmed by a husband for his wife.

*Shelley's grave

*George Eliot found the cemetery to be the most attractive burial place she had ever seen and I agree- it was a beautiful oasis of calm and quiet within the busy city.

*map of where famous authors stayed when visiting or living in Rome

* The Keats/Shelley Museum is next to the Spanish steps and houses tons of treasures - letters, locks of hair, books, not to mention the room where Keats died.

Last week Jake and I took our first trip to Rome since living in Naples. We had both been to Rome years ago, but it was our first time being there together. We spend a lot of the trip following in George Eliot's footsteps and visiting the sights she saw during her 1860 trip to Italy.

More Ischia

*We had to go through this tunnel to get to the elevator to ride up to the hotel

*It was SO HOT! We were melting so we ducked into a great wine bar for some refreshing prosecco

*bridge connecting island to hotel island- we went swimming italian style-meaning, we climbed down the rocks right into the water to the right of the bridge

*ruins up by the hotel

Ischia

*View of the hotel

*View from hotel

To all of our followers- AKA mom and Auntie Tripp, sorry for the lapse in uploading pictures. A few weeks ago Jake and I took a ferry ride to the island of Ischia (about an hour from Naples). The hotel we stayed at was converted from a monastery and was across a bridge from the main island on its own little island.