Memories and dreams

I visited Italy during the summer 2007. The year itself was the hardest of my life, which soiled the memories somewhat. But the yearning and dreaming of going back to Italy has stayed with me. I went to the trip with my ex and no matter how things ended with him, I will forever be grateful for him for taking me on this trip and booking every single day-trip that I wanted to go to. =)

I've only shown a few of these pictures online before this, which is kind of a shame, because I really like the pictures... so I decided to post this memory post.
I visited Italy, Cattolica (a small coast town in the east coast of Italy below Venice) on August 2007. I was in the town very little because I had booked every trip possible during the week. I visited Firenze (Florence) for a day, Venezia (Venice) for another day, the Frazassi caves for half a day trip and small vinyard in Toscana the other half and spend a night in a beautiful homestead in Toscana, eating a festious Italian meal. Yum.
What a trip! ^___^

The view from the balcony of the hotelroom at night. Ocean
and more ocean and warm, salty ocean wind. Ah!

The beach close to the hotel (you can just see the hotel at the
end of the beach). I only visited the beach when it was already
closed because it was way too hot and crowded for my taste in the
 middle of the day.

The Frazassi caves, HUGE caves with these stalagmites and
stalactites in caves that went on for miles and miles and miles.
... 42 miles, if I remember correctly.

The air was almost Nordicly cold in the caves, which I absolutely
loved. I also seem to have no claustrophobia, because I loved
those caves. ^__^ Then again, the caves were pretty big. The
biggest one is so big you could fit the St. Peters basilica in it.
It was HUGE!

Firenze, at the Piazza Della Signoria, Palazzo Vecchio with the
Michelangelo's David's (replica) statue and Bartolomeo's
Bandinelli statue. ♥

View from the Piazza Michelangelo on top of Firenze. The
view was just incredible! You can see the famous Pridge Ponte
Vecchio and the church Santa Maria Del Fiore.

Another picture from the Piazza Della Signoria,
one of the MANY statues on the square. The
cote where most of the statues were, is called
Loggia Dei Lanzi and this statue is Perseus
by Cellini. I completely fell in love with this
statue, so much so that I had to buy a small
replica of it to take home. ♥

Galileo's tomb in the Santa Croce church.  The
whole church was full of these incredibly beautiful
artistic tombs. Also Michelangelo and Dante are
buried in the church but I didn't get photos of
their tombs because taking photos was really difficult,
flashes were not allowed inside the church.

A close-up of the HUGE and magnificent church
Santa Maria Del Fiore, one of the most known
churches in the world.  If you are interested
of architecture, this building is one you should
look into, it's history is so thrilling.

Santa Maria Del Fiore from a little farther away. You can
almost see half of it. It's so HUGE that you cannot get
a picture of the whole church from this close.

The cote Loggia Dei lanzi from the Piazza Della Signoria. You
can just see Perseus on the left hand corner and the many
other wonderful statues there were... and all the people.
There was no place in Firenze where there would not have
been a huge crowd. =D

A close up of  one of the statues in Loggia Dei lanzi.
"Hercules fighting the centaur Nessus" by the sculptor
Giambologna.

View to the beauuutiful hills of Toscana. We drove hours
along roads in this view. Unfortunately I have a really bad
travel sickness so I wasn't really enjoying the trip in a car. XD

The view to the hills at the village where the Italian meal
was served. It was just so breathtakingly beautiful. ♥

City of dreams.
Venice. This is a view to the famous Rialto bridge. The whole
immensely huge bridge is full of little stores.

View to the city itself from the canal that leads to the city. We arrived
there with a tourist boat (the trip was woooonderful!). The big
building in the middle is the doge's palace.

A square where the gondola's takes on passengers. There was
a gondolier singing here and it led people to this place. It
was almost magical, like a jump to the past.

One of the many many many canals in the city.
It was so beautiful I took several hundred pictures
just like this one.

And another canal and another condola.
The whole city of Venice is set on water, on top of
this marshland and has no roads, instead
there are these canals that you can travel
on in the condolas, or by the small walkways that
crisscross the city with little bridges over the
canals. ♥

View from the Rialto bridge, to the "main canal" of the city.
This was the place where in ancient times there goods were brought
into the city.

The huge and beautiful church of San Marco at the San Marco
square in Venice centrum next to the doge's palace.

The famous bridge of sighs. The building here used
to be a prison, where the prisoners were sentenced
to live for the rest of their lives. When they were walked
into the building, people could hear their sighs of
desperation from the bridge, that is how it got
it's name.

I hope you enjoyed this little jump into the past. I have sworn to one day return to Venice and Firenze, I say fell in love with those towns and there is still so many things I had no time to see. ^_^ Dreams...