I recently had the great honour of being invited to share my favourite things about Florence for two different (and beautiful) travel-related sites: Design*Sponge and Let's Get Lost. Coincidentally both of these projects came to fruition this week. Kate Hash, who writes the fabulous La Vita e' Bella blog and compiled the original Florence City Guide for Design*Sponge, came up with the brilliant idea of updating the guide by providing five points of view. She wrote the "Grand Tour" guide; Georgette Jupe wrote the Social Butterfly's guide; I wrote the art-buff/intellectual's guide (though unfortunately "art-buff" was removed from the section title); Emilia wrote the local's guide; and Birgitte wrote the photographer's guide. I think the result is a fun and original twist on an already solid guide and I'm really proud to have participated in the project in such impressive company.

I already knew Una Janicijevic as an incredibly talented artist when we worked together at Maclean's a few years ago, and have discovered through her gorgeous blog Let's Get Lost that she's a great writer too. She runs an awesome guest-blog series called Love Your City asking people to answer questions about the city where they live. I had a great time answering them.

In fact, through both these projects I've discovered that I really enjoy travel writing. I never thought it was for me so I had never tried it before this. Wait, that's not true. I'm forgetting about my top five favourite things about Rome and Berlin. At any rate, many thanks to Kate and Una for entrusting this newbie with the task. I welcome and look forward to more!