Blogs from Italy, Europe

Whiteout parties are the shit. After doing the drive through of Rome, it was nice to spend a whole day actually going in depth at the sites. We started off at trevy's trench where supposedly if you throw on coin over your left shoulder into the fountain you will find your soulmate. If you throw 2, you bring your soulmate back with you. Steve of course threw 2. He's really pushing to bring this Aussie girl back from our tour. Bryce threw 2 and giggled. Brody threw like 20. I pulled a couple coins outta the water to pay for some gellato (ice cream) Then we went to the pantheon. A massive building with columns 5 meters thick. It's very cool how the only light came from a circle from the top of the dome. After ... read more

25thMay 2012 Friday Our little Granddaughter Imogen is 1 today – where did that year go!! Romeo Romeo wherefore art though Romeo? – well we did not see him but we were in Verona. Juliet’s house had the balcony fitted in 1935! But Shakespeare did base his tragedy on real Italian families. The walls into the courtyard are covered in pledges of love and once again there is a wall of padlocks where the betrothed lock their love!! There is a statue of Juliet in the courtyard and and packed with lots of tourists. Lovely expensive shopping area. We also visited the Arena one of the largest Roman amphitheatres in the world. The plazas are very swish and the streets very narrow The Torre dei Lamberti you can climb, however, in total there are 368 steps ... read more

Lazy sleep in this morning, which was much needed. Yesterday in Rome was exhausting. We decided to take the twelve forty train today, and take time to have breakfast in the sun, enjoy our view and pack an overnight bag for our two night stay. It was a nice warm morning today, which made my usual plan of "wear everything you might need for two days" challenging and uncomfortable. It was such a lovely and idyllic morning that one of our party commented on the sweet, funny noises the cows were making in the distance, and the other three members of our party corrected unanimously that it was a chainsaw. The train went much more smoothly today, especially when we realized that we could actually stay on until a stop much closer to the monastery where ... read more

OK - I know. You've been missing the dulcet tones of text from afar. Well instead of going into detail, I'll give you a summary. I heard a sigh of relief - come on, own up! So I think I last blogged from Istanbul. It seems an eon ago. I took a two-day trip to Cappadocia in Central Anatolia (saw a few Anatolian shepherd puppies). Took a couple of day-tours, not usually my bag but I'd dashed off to Cappadocia - Land of beautiful horses - on a whim so I didn't organise any independent travel. Covered a few places of interest incuding the underground city where persecuted Christians used to live; the caves cut into the eroded sandstone under the basalt lava. Escaping Christians used to live here when the Romans came through. Underground churches ... read more

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

A hop, skip and a plane ride from London! We had a great flight then proceeded to get on the train fro Parma to reggio emilia. Glad we came after the big Quake that happened here. There is some damage as you can expect fro an area that has such old buildings. he sad part was that at this point 7 people lost their ives and any are left without homes. For the most part everything seems to be going as usual even though several buildings have some daage and barriers surrounding them. Nick and Marks place is very centrally located with cafe's, shop's surroundng it. We wet right away to their favorite hang out spot here everyone seems so nice and welcoming. They go have coffee in the ornng, Prosecco and apertivos in the evenng ... read more