Blogs from Florence, Tuscany, Italy, Europe
May 24th 2012
Wow, so, a lot has gone on since the last blog. Where to begin... Last day of Rome, this past Tuesday, was spent at the Colloseum and surrounding ruins. Amazingly, to us, Rome's weather is more horrrid than houston's! What had begun as a sunny day instantly became a stormy nightmare the moment we stepped out of the house. It was pouring, so we quickly dove into the Colloseum and chose a pretty good tour. It was incredible to us all to see the famous arena. Afterwards, we had a slightly less impressive tour of the ruins of Ceaser's house and the old Forum. Our tour guide was... Interesting. He was quite passionate about somethings, such as the pronunciation of the Palatine hill, PAl-ah-teen, by the way, never pal-an-tine. It only got worse when the man ... read more
May 22nd 2012
Geez, seems like forever since my last message. First off however our Internet connections have been a bit hit or miss pluss I'm just lazy! We flew from Prague to Venice no probs. arriving in Venice we took a water taxi to San Marco square which is the major piazza in Venice. Talk about a confusing place - no cars or scooters, just tiny lanes going every which way. Pretty cool though as I have always wanted to see all the buildings just rising up from the maze of canals, islands and water. We spent 3 days traipsing around, a lot of shops and touristy stuff as well as the history. First night we were blowing €6 a beer so I starteddrinking red wine which is a lot cheaper. When we left Venice I hired a ... read more
May 20th 2012
Sunday may 20th Uffizi time! Bless you. It turns out Uffizi is a very popular museum here. It's on all the tourist must see lists, and thus we bought tickets in advance, for eleven o'clock this morning. Breakfast today was cappuccini (the plural of cappuccino, see how Italian I've become?) and croissants, though Andre the coffee giant needed to follow hers with an espresso. Things at the Uffizi are confusing. There are three different doors in three locations to form lines, without any obvious indication as to which line meant what, and in addition at each of these doors there were several separate lines. It turns out people with prepaid tickets go to door three, so off we went. A tiny gypsy lady approached us for money while we were in line, and we declined, and ... read more
May 19th 2012
The train from Venice to Florence (or "Firenze" if you want to be Italian about it) was lovely, though I had to sit cross-legged because my Pygmy legs couldn't reach the floor. Florence is a bit of a rude awakening of cars, Vespas and crowds after the relative peace of Venice. While we waited for our rooms to be ready we had a glass of perseco in the sweltering heat on the square by our hotel. I had to use a putty scraper to get my melted ass off my chair. As usual with scenic destinations, the prices were sky high, with each glass of perseco costing 9 euros. Our hotel is a place my parents had stayed on a preview trip, and it's a great central location and looks down into the square. The elevator ... read more
The Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, aka: April 25th
Published: May 17th 2012Europe » Italy » Tuscany » Florence
May 17th 2012
This story actually begins on Tuesday April 24thbut unhappy events don’t begin until after the chime of midnight. Since I’m in Florence and church bells actually ring the hours there are actual chimes, although I didn’t hear them that evening. So Tuesday evening was the farewell event for the AIFS group from California, and to celebrate a karaoke evening was planned. Everyone from the Washington group was going to go and Michelle was even going to sing, if accompanied, because performing karaoke was one of the items on her bucket list. The basement of the Old Stove in Palazzo Vecchio was packed full of rambunctious college students ready to celebrate the end of finals; their teacher was not as kind as ours when it comes to school work. To start off the singing were three girls ... read more
May 13th 2012
Today I joined Rolando and two of his friends, Lusciano and Giannino, for the final Serie A soccer match between the home team Fiorentina and the Sardinian team Cagliari. Not only was it an ugly, windy and rainy day, but the match turned out to be less than exciting, ending in a 0:0 score, and with the Fiorentina not playing all that well. Oh well, this was my first European soccer match, so all was not lost in a poor performance! The Italians, at least in Florence, mean serious business with regards to security at the ball park. Every ticket purchased is assigned to a specific person using Italian I.D.s and passports for foreigners like me. There didn't appear to be much if any alcohol inside the stadium, but del cafe, as with everyplace in Italy, ... read more
From My Bumpy Flight to Paris, to a Hop, Skip and a Leap Over the Alps
Published: May 11th 2012Europe » Italy » Tuscany » Florence
May 9th 2012
It seemed almost a waste of good ink to receive a passport stamp from the French customs officials for such a very short layover within the confines of Paris' Charles De Gaulle Airport (especially since I did not visit customs upon arrival in Italy; I want my stamp!). Although I couldn't recognize it in his completely serious tone, I think the agent was teasing me for having not visited New Caledonia, for some reason, when he recognized my previous trips to the former French colonials Vanuatu and French Tahiti, all of which came off as though he was quizzing me on my own record as a security measure. And I thought the Germans were supposed to be lacking in the Humor Department! The layover was quick and easy, although directions to the appropriate terminal and gate ... read more
May 8th 2012
It has been a busy two weeks and I have so much to catch everyone up on. I made a checklist of everything yesterday while on the train so I would be sure not to leave anything out. I left off with Saturday April 21st and my hike through the Tuscan hillside. The following day was our AIFS cultural outing to the football game between Fiorentina and Inter Milan. I knew it was going to be a difficult outing because of all my physical activity the previous day; what I didn’t expect was the migraine I had upon waking up in the morning. I made sure to dig out my migraine meds and take a couple before getting ready to go to the game. On top of the migraine I was sore, it hurt to walk, ... read more
May 7th 2012
Day 1 Another overnight ferry, a few trains later and we made it to Florence. Our B&B was a bit average but none the less it was livable... We made our way in to the centre and found the Duomo. Yep, pretty impressive! We climbed the couple of hundred steps to the top of the bell tower and the view was incredible! We wandered through the streets of Florence, fought our way through the market stalls (and I didn't buy ANYTHING! Not that I wasn't tempted...), found some gelati and then had a beautiful dinner. Of course we sat next to a table full of Aussies! We seem to always find the Aussies! Despite keeping our voices down they recognized the accent and we spent the rest of evening chatting to them. Day 2 We got ... read more
May 5th 2012
Hi everyone, We are enjoying our last day in Florence wondering around and still finding things to see. We went to Lucca yesterday for a few hours in the afternoon. It is a lovely medieval walled town. The walls are still intact which is quite unusual for these very old towns. We walked around the top of the wall which is a wide street (4.5km). We came out lo the town a different way and ended up walking all the way around the outside of the the town. We walked for nearly 1hr before we found the train station. We just made the train! I think we we walked well over 15kms yesterday.... No exaggeration. Earlier today we went for a walk over the Pont Vecchio, a very famous bridge here. It was full of people ... read more
