FROM FRANCE TO ITALY TO FRANCE AGAIN

---

Time to catch you up on where we’ve been. Haven’t had good internet access for the past few days so this is my chance to catch you all up. Wednesday we spend the day in an ancient town outside of Nice named St. Paul de Vence (I may have called in St. Peter’s in my prior Blog but Renee has corrected me). St Paul was a beautiful hilltop town in the Provence area filled with wonderful art galleries and shops. We also found a great place for homemade Gellato (Pistachio) continuing our tour of the great ice cream and gelato stores of Europe.

Thursday we spent a cloudy, cool day in Florence shopping and sightseeing. Even though it was mid-week in late October, the city was still filled with tourists. It made us glad we are here in October when it is cool instead of the summer when the crowds are even worse. There are some amazing churches in Florence - one is the fourth largest in the world. I posted a picture of one of the facades but a full picture will need to be created from a panoramic montage I took because it’s impossible to get the who church in one picture. Great entertainment Thursday night on the ship - an actress from London who’s done many musical plays in London including Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar. An amazing voice.

Friday dawned cool and pouring. We walked 20 minutes in heavy rain to a rental car place at our port outside of Rome to get our car for our independent adventure. We drove about an hour away to the town of Viterbo and spent the day touring the Medieval Section. Most of the buildings there were build between 1050 and 1300 and the area was the home to 33 popes and the location of most papal conclaves until the 18th century. Really pretty and amazingly old.

Today, Saturday was a beautiful, warm, sunny day - our first. We spent the day touring a nougat factory, a factory that distills essential oils for perfume and medicines and a winery - all located outside of the capital of Corsica. This is a beautiful Island and one we knew nothing about before we came here other than the fact that it was the birthplace of Napoleon. It has a beautiful warm coastline yet the extension of the Alps where continue onto this Island are tall enough that from our ship we could see snow on the highest peaks in Northern Corsica. A really interesting Island with a tremendous variety of climate, landscape and things to do. Someplace to come back to for a longer time period.

As we pulled out of port tonight we say two whales keeping pace with a small boat headed into the harbour. Pretty impressive!

Tomorrow is our first full day at sea. We are looking forward to relaxing and doing little! Then Monday we are off to Gibraltar. Everyone is feeling well and having a great time. We miss you all!

Larry

---