We arrived in Venice on Wednesday afternoon, and it really was love at first sight. It is such a pretty city, all tiny winding footpaths and canals, little hidden away campos (squares), window boxes spilling over with spring flowers, gondolas gliding up and down, glossy little shops and dusty houses. All the colours are earthy and slightly muted, which contrasts with the light, which is bright even when its overcast. It is such an easy place to get lost in. As I make my way down a street, turning randomly here and there, I am always trying to keep a sense [View Full Entry]

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I am happy to report that after a slightly poor start, with the Pisa trip, Florence has been a wonderful place. We are staying at Hotel David, which is a bus ride from the main historical centre, and is a really lovely hotel. Free internet, happy hour, large room...all v good. We haven't really done as many sites as in other places, partly because of an increasing case of museum fatigue, but also because a lot of what we wanted to see was in one place - the Ufizzi. To explain a little, when I studied art history at school, I [View Full Entry]

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Well it had to happen, today was not really a success. Off to Pisa we went, on a train that was packed to the gunwhales with other tourists. Andrew had heard at the hotel happy hour last night that there are often long queues so that many people end up leaving Pisa not having climbed the tower, so I sort of had it in my head this might happen to us too. As I sat there in the hot packed train I started thinking it was possibly a bit silly that we were all traipsing across the countryside to view a [View Full Entry]

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On Saturday we left Sorrento and headed up-country to Siena. Of course, the journey was not without incident. We took the train to Naples, but upon arriving at a station called Napoli-Garibaldi, we had a momentary dilemma as to whether this was our station. The Eurail guide said Napoli-Centrale! We dithered. We got off. We dithered some more. We got back on. Train pulled out of the station. A man, who had watched all this, raised an eyebrow, so we asked "Roma?". No, he said, "Garibaldi". Argh!! We got off at the next Napoli-something station. We looked around, nothing seemed to [View Full Entry]

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Have just realised I've not said anything about these extremely important topics. First up, the food is fantastic. Needless to say pizza, pasta & gelato are plentiful and major part of our current diet. I've eaten so much risotto and pasta I could probably be mistaken for a Swiss ball were it not for the incredible amount of walking we're doing. The salads are also spectacular, and I've suddenly taken to seafood in a big way so you can imagine the happy combinations that makes for. The people are also wonderful, most Italians seem to speak some English and we do [View Full Entry]

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This morning we set off bright and early (again! Child free and on holiday and we haven't slept past 8am yet! Not our fault, just can't stop waking up early) and took the Circumversiviano (goes around Mt Vesuvius) to Pompeii. It was an absolute scorcher, by 11am we were feeling hot and frazzled. But Pompeii is worth frying a little for, because its a facinating place. True, most of the really interesting bits have been carted away to a museum in Naples, so it felt a little like entering a tomb after the grave robbers have been there, but there is [View Full Entry]

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So, after the bus deposited us by the side of the road in Sorrento, we gratefully found our room and collapsed for a bit. But nothing gets these intrepid travellers down for long! Oh no. We perked up eventually (helped by the fact that our room was lovely, the view stupendous, and the bathroom huge. Did I mention that our bathroom in Rome was too small to swing a rat? And that the shower was like, literally, about a foot square. If I dropped my shampoo - which I did, of course - I actually had to open the door so [View Full Entry]

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Finally, after a few false starts we got to St Peters. Monday the queue was huge, Tuesday morning it was fout times the hugeness. Tuesday afternoon we left our room to try again and I discovered it was cold so went back for hat and scarf. We got two blocks from our room then it started raining. Back to hotel for coats. Now utterly determined to see flipping thing whatever happened next. Queue was approximately 3/4 of initial hugeness, and the rain didn't last long, so we were away. For me the highlight was seeing Michaelangelo's Pieta, it is so beautiful [View Full Entry]

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The Vatican was every bit as wonderful as I expected. We queued for an hour to get in then joined the hordes, trying to drink in as much as possible of the art works around us. It was a little unbelievable to me that I was seeing frescos painted by Raphael, but the true highlight was standing in the Sistene Chapel, looking up, and finding myself looking straight at God's hand, touching Adam's, bringing him to life. It was a long way from Mrs Gould's aft history class iin 1990, but the wait was worth it. I even bought a poster [View Full Entry]

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One taxi ride, one plane ride, one looooong walk through Frankfurt airport, one more plane ride, and we made it to Rome. We allowed ourselves to be fleeced by a taxi driver in the interests of getting to our hotel sooner, and pitched up at Les Chambres d'Or. Things got very Fawlty Towers at this point. The room wasn't ready because it had just been painted, so we were shifted to another hotel for the night. A car would take us there. A friendly fellow was dispatched to assist. Instead of putting us in a taxi he lead us to a [View Full Entry]

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