A Tour of Italy with Crystal

When Brian's sister was coming over to visit, she said she wanted to see Italy, and boy, did we set up quite the Italian adventure!  In hindsight, it was a lot to do in less than a week, but we wanted to make sure she got her money's worth and saw different parts of Italy. 

We started in the Tuscany region of Italy where we stayed in an Agriturismo and did wine tastings and food tastings throughout the region.  An Agriturismo is like a farmhouse or vineyard house - you're basically staying with a family in the countryside.  Unfortunately, we needed a designated driver so only 2/3 of us could do wine tastings at a time, but in the end, I think we can all say we enjoyed a lot of Italian vino!  =)

After Tuscany, we made our way to Florence, which Crystal and I had never seen before.  It was a completley different feel than Tuscany, more of a big city obviously.  We stayed in a great B&B that had color-themed rooms.  Ironically Crystal got the orange room and we got the blue room - GO GATORS!!!  =)  Florence was a bit overwhelming, and it was really hot.  I know my friends and family in Florida will say it's nothing compared to Florida's heat, but it's hard when most places don't have A/C where you can escape to! 

Two nights later, we took a 2-hour train ride to Venice, a city I have always wanted to visit.  It was more beautiful than I even imagined.  We took a waterbus to our hotel (because of course you can't drive anywhere!), and it was just so beautiful to see the architecture from the Grand Canal.  One of our favorite parts of Venice was shopping for glass in the little stores - it's so amazing to see them make such intricate pieces of art out of glass!

We finished up in Italy, but our adventure was not over.  From Venice, we boarded an overnight train to get us over to Croatia to visit Brian and Crystal's distant family who we had never met before.  The train was quite the event.  More details on that tomorrow!  In the meantime, hope you enjoy some of other pictures from beautiful Italia!