Florence is such a great place. Clean, well maintained and beautiful with plenty of places to eat and drink. We were just thinking what a wonderful place it was when the waiter we’d asked to take a photo of us dropped our little camera on the slate floor. The lens looked to be on a weird angle. The photo looked like this:
Busted!

It wasn’t able to focus anymore. Turning it off and on just gave a message along the lines of “Lens error – please restart camera.”. This really put us in a foul mood. When we got back to the hotel and called the insurance company, they said we should buy a new camera, and they’ll reimburse us the value of the old one provided we’ve got a receipt for the old camera. Problem is, this camera is already an insurance provided camera we got for loosing the previous one. Sitting around wondering what to do I tried popping the lens back into place one more time. The amount of force required is really substantial. It didn’t pop back into place, it cracked back into place. Seems to work fine, albeit with a bit of crunching and whiring as it moves in and out.

Takes quite good night photos:
Florence Duomo

The hotel we stayed at in Florence was excellent. Right in the center, friendly and not too pricy ( as we’ve come to discover ).

Next stop is Santa Margherita Ligure – just past Cinque Terre where we stayed at Hotel Mediterraneo.