My wife and I went for a short break to Florence last week. The weather was stunning – there may not have ben a cloud in the sky in the five days – and of course the city was sensationally beautiful. Both flights were on time (the plane for the outbound one is shown on the home page) and incident-free…well, except for the fact that going out I unaccountably forgot to stick my mobile in my rucksack to go through security, which caused a brief kerfuffle.

One day over lunch there was a neat serendipitous experience. We were in a delightful restaurant, a very small one, when who should breeze in with family and friends but Helena Bonham Carter. One of her most famous film appearances was in Room With View, released in 1985 when she was not yet 20. A great deal of that was set in Florence.

All well and good but admittedly incidental to a flying blog. But not so the two photos shown here, which I think epitomise one of the most amazing things about air travel: that you can get to see familiar landmarks in a far from familiar fashion.