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September 26 – Manarolla to Florence to Venice We had to say goodbye to our favorite location this morning. We thoroughly enjoyed our little rooms and roof top terrace at Manarolla. The late afternoon swim and walking up to the small grocery store and picking up our bread, meat, cheese, wine, and of course Pringles!. We also completed our nights with a beautiful sunset and several games of 500. We left very early (7:15 am) to meet our driver back to Florence. A quiet ride out of the sleepy seaside Cinque Terre to the hustle and bustle of Florence. We arrived in Florence an hour early and prepared to meet our 10:30 train to Venice. Right on time after we had a chance to use the restroom or WC, as they call them in Italy. You ... read more

September 24 - Cinque Terre - Manarola We left our hotel in Florence at 9:00 am sharp with our driver to Cinque Terre. The drive was very interesting, we passed by many marble and granite quarry's. We saw many raw blocks of granite and marble ready to be processed and shipped out. We also drove through the city of La Spezia. A beautiful seaport town with large cruise boats, ocean going transport vessels, and one of the home ports of the Italian navy. We then began the climb up the mountain to the sea. We made a number switchbacks and finally entered a large tunnel which emptied us out to the Mediterranean Sea. We then started our trek to our village, Manarola. Manarola is the second village of the five along the national park of Cinque ... read more

Monday September 22, 2014 Sorrento – Naples – Rome – Florence We left Sorrento early this morning. Our driver was an hour early and we were behind. We fought Monday morning traffic out of Sorrento and ended up missing our train to Florence. Never fear, our travel company rebooked us on the next high speed train and we left exactly one hour later 11:00 am. Wonderful train ride, high speed and business class. We all got short nap including Dan and we played several hands of 500, with Jane and Sherry winning again! We had short stop in Rome and the train left and we arrived in Florence at 2:00 pm. We checked into our hotel – Hotel Santa Maria Novella – in the Santa Maria Piazza. A beautiful open area with the Santa Marie Novella ... read more

Saturday September 20, 2004 Rome to Naples to Pompeii and Sorrento We finished our stay in Rome with an early breakfast at our Rome hotel Capo Africa. Great location and very nice…Our tour company had a driver for us and quick ride to the train terminal. We of course got on the wrong train to Naples but made it there successfully. We met our Naples driver and he got us to Pompeii for the tour of the city buried in ash from the volcano Vesuvius. The city itself was buried in 30’ of ash from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius on August of 79 A.D. The citizens that could escape the ash cloud and poisonous gas died in their homes when the roofs collapsed. Once they discovered the buried city in the 1700’s, the ash was ... read more

We began the morning with our first tour of the trip. We met our tour guide at 8:30 am this morning at entrance of the Colosseum. Our tour guide Francesca gave us a wonderful and informative tour of the Colosseum. The Colosseum took 10 years to build and had events twice a week. It held 60,000 people and even had a cotton dome top (sort like the old Metrodome), except they had slaves to pulley it each time they needed it to keep the sun from bearing down on the crowd. The floor of the Colosseum housed different scenery, animals and also the famous gladiators. Quite an engineering foot! We left the Colosseum and toured the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill and all of its ancient ruins and arches. So much history to see, and to see ... read more