20 years of facsinating adventures

So what do you get the man you've been with for over 20 years?

Yes, Orest and I just celebrated 20 years of wedded bliss(and not-so bliss), and how better to do so, than by taking him on a surprise weekend trip to Florence? I'd booked this long ago, but I needed Orest to take the Friday off in order to maximize the amount we could take in. So here's a recap of of that conversation:
"I'm busy at work, I can't take too many days off, blah, blah, blah". he says.

"So what you're telling me is that you've got time to go skiing whenever you want, but you don't have the time to celebrate the fact that we've been married for 20 years?!?"

Silence....

"Ok...Well, if you put it that way...I'll put it in my calendar."

Ya think?! Men, sometimes they just not on the same wavelength!

Anyway, the trip went really well (considering we flew RyanAir for the first time). Our hotel was fabulous, very modern; one of Salvatore Ferragamo's hotels. (He's the famous shoe & bag designer, originally from Florence and has about 4 properties there, plus a shoe museum.) Our room overlooked the Ponte Vecchio, so we couldn't be any closer to the centre of old Florence.

We spent the first afternoon just doing a city tour, walking and taking in the feel of Florentine architecture, much of which dated back to medieval times. (I'd read the Birth of Venus by Sandra Dunant over the summer and was intrigued to see how much of what I'd read was there before my very eyes.) The next day, we went in to two of the most important churches: the Duomo and Santa Croce and then spent the rest of the day at the Uffizi gallery, to see Boticelli's famous Birth of Venus. And the final day we went to see Michaelangelo's David at the Academmia and drove up to San Miniato al Monte for a final vista of the lovely bridges over the Arno river.

It was probably the best way to spend 2 days in a city, because when we left, we felt we truly had seen everything there was to see in Florence (historically, architecturally and artistically). I'm sure if we had been on our own, we would have just wandered around aimlessly and never gained the in depth knowledge that both Orest and I received on not just Florence, but the de Medicis and the political history surrounding this beautiful city.