Though we flew in via Rome, leaving SF on Christmas day, arriving in Italy the day after Christmas, we left Rome 24 hours later and started our trip in Florence. This photo was taken from the second floor of the "bottom" of the "U" of the U-shaped Uffizi Gallery, looking out over the Arno. You can tell, from the color of the water, that there had recently been a lot of rain -- and, in fact, this rain didn't really let up during the time that we were in Italy, with a few exceptions.

Among his many other plans, Leonardo had big plans for this river. A biographer in the 1500s wrote, "he was the first, although but a youth, who suggested the plan of reducing the river Arno to a navigable canal from Pisa to Florence."