Ciao Firenze! Day 1 in Florence:

Arriving in Florence, we hiked our too large rolling suitcases down to the Arno River towards our hotel.  Justin used his Platinum Status Starwoods points to book us a sweat room at the St. Regis hotel.  When we arrived they upgraded us to a Junior Suite! The room was gorgeous.  The hotel is decorated with classy Italian décor.  Our room had views of the Arno River and a small terrace.  It also had a sitting room, powder room and walk in closet in addition to the large white marble bathroom and exquisite bedroom.  If we were any other city we possibly would have opted to just hang out in our room all day! Instead we headed out to Piazza Della Signoria to go to the Bargello and Uffizi Museums. 

The Bargello is an old fortress type building that at one point was a prison, it had a few bronze and marble sculptures to see as well as rooms of old artifacts like jewelry, small bronze trinkets and tableware.  

We stood in line at the Uffizi for about an hour here as well, once again only wishing to see a handful of paintings.  The Uffizi is home to some of Botticelli's most famous work, The Birth of Venus and The Primavera.  There are also a few Raphael's, a painting by Michelangelo and a handful of Caravaggios.  We breezed through the rest, dropping us outside the museum just before sunset. 

We then began the walk back towards our hotel, stopping at a little shop to grab some cheese, meat and wine to enjoy on our terrace before dinner.  For dinner we had reservations at the restaurant in the Westin next door to us.  Se-Sto, the restaurant, is located on the top floor of the Westin.   The views are stunning and the food was superb. 

For appetizers Justin had burrata with eggplant mousse and tomato icecream and I had prawns with sweet pepper pure and chick pea millet flat bread.  I could have eaten that all night, the prawns were cooked perfectly so they were nice and meaty instead of watery, and I am going to have to learn how to make chickpea flatbread for my gluten free sister. For dinner Justin tried their filet, which was also yummy but a bit on the heavy side as it was paired with a truffle sauce.  I had the pork chop with mashed potatoes and Chinese cabbage.  In between appetizers and our main course we split a beet risotto which was both beautiful to look at (as it was a dark red/magenta) and beautiful to eat!

There was a bit of a breeze way up on top of the Westin it was a fantastic meal overlooking the Tuscan countryside and the Arno River.