After Venice, we traveled to Florence and Milan where I took exactly 3 photos. Three photos of the artists painting in the courtyard behind the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. And two are blurry beyond recognition. Here it is: my photo evidence of this part of the trip. You’ll be stuck with just my rambling to fill in the rest.

See, we’d been to Florence before. Last time, I wanted to move there – now downgraded to spending our next Italian trip with Florence as our homebase. I’d already seen the Duomo and other churches, toured the Uffizi and Academia, and spent hours on the banks of the Arno, trying to get that perfect. This time: eh. I just wanted to go shopping and relax (and Matt wanted only to eat well and revisit the Uffizi for the third time).

We did, indeed, shop and eat well. We returned to Mario’s for excellent steak (a whole kilo of it, split between us – and this was after a first course of veggie soup and shrimp pasta). We split 3 sandwiches from the excellent sandwich shop. We picked up a hand-painted ceremic bowl from the same shop we got the coordinating plate last time. I hemed and hawed over buying a leather bag and decided, instead, that I’d probably never use it, anyway.

We also just did a whole lot of sitting and relaxing, rather tired of being tourists.

In Milan, we visited the overpriced but beautiful shopping mall and the cathedral, saw the Last Supper (much bigger than you’d think – it takes up a whole wall), and did more I’m-burned-out-from-traveling sitting and relaxing, this time mostly at our hotel. I didn’t even consider taking photos there, I was so tired of being on the go (and, well, there wasn’t a ton which I wish I’d catpured).

So, yeah, that’s the last part of our visit to Europe. I’m glad to be back home, to my own life though I look forward to our next European trip - a week in Spain with my parents during their Spring Break in 2013.