It’s just past 6:00AM at a cargo airport.  We speak no Italian nor German, we just missed our flight from Frankfurt to Rome and had no idea how we would make our way there.

We decided to board a Ryan Air flight from Frankfurt to Pisa with mixed feelings: frustration, exhaustion, and adventure.   That’s the fun of traveling though, never ending surprises and excitement so we just enjoyed the moment!

We landed in Pisa with just enough time to get a blurry picture of the Tower of Pisa and quick plate of pasta before getting to the train station to catch the last train out for Rome.

Missing the plane turned out not so bad!  Not only did we get to see the leaning tower of Pisa and eat a cheap and tasty plate of pasta, the train to Rome actually dropped us off one block away from the hotel we booked!

After a long day of walking and eating, it was great to come back to Italian television, the one English movie channel and the rainforest shower head…

We had a simple goal for our trip in Rome, find beautiful florists to connect with and check out some historical sites along the way.

Coliseum. Check.

Spanish Steps.  Check.

Pantheon. Check.

Where were all the florists?  The research we did online were proving to be disappointing. Feeling defeated after asking many locals where the best florists were located, we finally found this place!  “Tulipani Bianchi”

The store was clean like a hospital but warm like a church.

They had pretty cool arrangements like this one…

The owner was very friendly, telling us that his shop is one of many in Western Europe, then proceeded to show us how he wraps bouquets in Rome.

Feeling productive, we then chased the second goal of coming to Rome.  EATING!

I would normally never eat an artichoke on a plate, but this was amazing!

Beef carpaccio was very different at this Roman Restaurant compared to the dishes we’ve had in Vancouver, the slices were so thick and I was stuffed after eating just a few pieces!

Yup!  After eating the appetizers and the pasta, we also polished off this pizza!

The next morning we were hard at work, buying buckets of flowers online, replying to emails and searching for more florists to visit.

As we walked the city, we took in more sights like the Vatican and Trevi Fountain:

We visited many flower shops, but could not find one that we feel we could establish a relationship with and be confident to recommend to our clients who want to send flowers to Rome.

Night came and reading street signs became difficult….no, that’s not true, it was because we can’t read Italian!

We had one more shop on our list.

We immediately fell in love with the cute little store and the owner was the nicest guy we met on our entire trip. The name of the flower shop is called: BLOEMEN

He told us that Italian’s in Roma prefer to spend their money on clothes and fashion and less on flowers, but even though he had a low volume of customers, he carried and stocked rare and premium flowers. The roses are so big and fragrant.

Simple but artistic design with a piece of drift wood and moss in a big glass cube.

Purple and green arrangements with branches. These are one of my favoriate designed by Claudio.

Although we had a significant language barrier, we still had the same taste in floral design.  He even went to the trouble of showing us his favourite floral design books.

It was funny that he really liked Jeff’s designs since his show was just starting to air on TLC.

If you ever need to send flowers to Rome, we highly recommend his services, he is so passionate about floral design and quality!

Visitors to Vancouver, you’ll have a much easier time finding great florists…..we hope you choose us as we love being inspired, enjoy beautiful floral designs and we’re always looking for ways to make everyone around us happy!