Beautiful Things

'The world' she thought ' is certainly full of beautiful things, if only I could come across them.'

E.M. Forster A Room with a View

To help Lucy Honeychurch out, because it's a Friday in November and because we haven't had any flowers for a while....

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A Room With A View Memories

As we walked, observed, felt and smelt our way around Florence glimpses of the book came back to me. So here are my A Room With A View Moments from our trip.

I think they were more Eleanor Lavish, than the Miss Allens, even though there were two of them. Two American women living in Florence at the bar in our hotel. Struck up conversation with a couple by saying
"Can you answer a bet - are you on honeymoon?" After that they proceeded to give travel and restaurant advice.

Said honeymoon couple in our hotel.

Discussing Postcards in Piazza Santa Croce - just where Lucy dropped her postcards....

Mr. Eager would have been the character to over hear this comment and retell it countless times.
A British school girl half way around The Uffizi, I think on an art trip as they all had sketch books, saying to her friend as she looked at a Madonna painting.
"Who is this Madonna? Is she our Madonna? The Madonna?"
(We think she meant Madonna Louise Ceccione)

A huge thunderstorm with great cracks of thunder and lightening. Thankfully we were safe in our hotel room and not out in a carriage.

Seeing a couple sitting on Mackintosh squares.

Lazing in bed on the last morning hearing Puccini's Oh Mio bambino caro

Being in Florence with the man I love.

Florence

Woo hoo we're off for a short break - to Florence. Oh how Twin and I adored the book, the film, Freddie.... For some 'I Capture the Castle' is their teenage daydream book for us it was 'A Room with a View.' I'm reading my original copy with 1988 written in the inside in my school girl handwriting. I think this trip will be different to when Twin and I went. No pretending to be Lucy standing by the Arno. Warmth has already been warned, and was already aware, that there will be moments of "In A Room with a View this is where....."

"It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling...It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings , to lean out on the sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road." E.M. Forster A Room with a View.

A Room with a View

To revisiting cities in different stages in life.