John: Hello Florence.

Yet again I am writing this while I am actually somewhere else. I am stretched out on the bed in our little apartment in Paris.

 I tried writing this blog on the plane, but thanks to Air France's dodgy technology (I'm going to blame them anyway) it disappeared. But I can more or less remember what I wrote word for word, so here it is/was.

Thanks to the media, everyone has some image of Florence in their mind.

 They are always elegant and beautiful and having spent some time there, these images appear to be correct. We were fortunate to stay in a very cozy little boutique hotel in a tree lined leafy suburb. Even the taxi driver was impressed.

After the sprawl and chaos of Naples, our hotel in Florence was a: clean, green, tranquil heaven. But not quite! Neither Julie or I could get the toilet to flush. After the trials and tribulations with our room in Naples the first thoughts were OMG not again! but all was not lost. The plumber whilst repairing it was giving me a running lecture on the principles of: water pressure, forces of gravity, and pounds per square inch, or something like. All the while I was thinking that I really SHOULD have paid more attention to the tour guide when she was talking about lead piping and plumbing B.C. in Pompeii. 

However back in our hotel room in present day Florence, the problem was fixed and would not re-occur, (it didn't) if the following course of action was followed. 

"Sir this is Italy. If you want something to work the first thing you do is pray! When youa done this you push the (flush) button in hard, and let go quick. You try" 

I did ... it worked. So with that problem solved we could look forward to or first day out in Florence the next day, The Uffizi gallery.