Pat and Ann

Back in Roma on Monday, 23 Ottobre, we chose to buy tickets for one of the hop on-hop off buses. These are pretty good values as the tickets are good for 24 hours. The plan is to cover everything to San Pietro on the bus and then come back around after to hop off and see the sights missed before the Vatican. We were able to cover a lot of real estate and save our feet. We did a drive by at Circus Maximus, which is now a place for joggers; not a single chariot in sight. Behind it is the other side of the "condo's" overlooking Foro Romano. We first hopped off in the morning at the Vatican, awed by the size of the piazza and St. Peter's Basilica. The line to enter St. Peters ... read more

Moving from Sorrento to Roma was another Italian train adventure, although certainly more tolerable than previous ones. We caught the Sita (city bus) outside our hotel. The luggage compartment under the bus was full, so we joined the other sardines on board with our 2 rollers and 2 backpacks. Ann was jammed into a double seat with all the luggage while Pat stood in the aisle. Hi ho, hi ho, down the switchback road we go. Fortunately, the Circumvesuviana train to Napoli wasn't crowded. We navigated the Napoli train station much better than our first time through. Climbed aboard the Eurostar and moved to Roma. Despite poor maps, we found the Hotel Kennedy was two blocks from the Termini, so it was an easy walk in the light rain that was falling. The hotel had an ... read more

We've realized that our diary dates don't correspond to the actual date we are journaling. Sorry if that has been confusing. Also, creating these journals has been quite a learning experience. The European keyboard is not the same as the US, so several of the non-alpha keys are in different places. For example, the @ symbol shares a key with ò and ç We have to use a separate ALT GR key to use the #. The apostrophe shares the ? key and is on the top row. Parens are on 8 and 9. So there are lots of typos to fix before we can publish for your reading piacere. We added shower photos to the 16 Ottobre journal. OK, on to Sunday, 15 Ottobre. Sundays have been good to us. First there was San Marco ... read more

We added text and photos to Venezia. Sorry we didn't check in during the Como days. The Internet spots were in Como; we were 15 minutes away by boat, so didn't make the time to blog. The photos hardly do justice to the beauty of Lago di Como. The mountains just pop up out of the water; little villages built into the hillsides. The best transportation seems to be by boat - certainly the most enjoyable. It's low season now, so there are very few tourists in Cernobbio. We love the slowness of the area. We called the "dock boy" Ricco Suavé because he was so full of himself. He worked about 10 minutes of every hour and disappeared until 5 minutes before the next boat. It took about a little over an hour by the ... read more

First, a little background for those of you who don’t know Pat; he has worked in the retail ski industry (boot-fitter extraordinaire) since 1973. So, from the start of planning for this trip, Pat wanted to take a day-trip from Venezia to the ‘Mecca’ of all things ski boot, Montabelluna, Italy. A majority of ski boots comes from this area in Italy. The arrangements where made by the Dolomite (doh-loh-mē-tay) Ski Boot sales representative Pat worked with. Bill, mille grazie! We would travel by train to a near-by town; there we would ride to the Tecnica-Dolomite-Nordica-Lowa factory; tour the factory, have lunch, and once we were done at 2:30pm; ride back on the train to complete the day! Oh, so simple! More background; from the beginning of our plans, we wanted to be away from the ... read more

It was a little scary leaving the comfort of our Lucca translators, but we jumped right in. We arrived in Venezia about 6:30 pm, so it was dark. We had a poor map and no real directions to our hotel. It took a few hours, but we finally managed to navigate the canals on the vaparetto (water bus) to our hotel. We thought we were lost, but a helpful waitress made a call to the hotel for directions. It was just around the corner from us! Venezia is all cement and water; no grass. The dogs do their business wherever, so it's important to watch where we walk. There are no cars or bikes --all traffic is either by foot or boat. The city is a maze and finding the cheese at the end is impossible! ... read more