This was the worst day yet. I woke up at 11 feeling deathly ill and wanted to stay in bed. I linered, listening again to the piano music drfting in through the window, while Sam made us breakfast. But we had 1:30 reservations at the Borghese Gallery and I knew if we did not go then, we would not get to see it. I told Sam, however, that I would not walk all the way across Rome to get there. We would have to figure out the Metro system. There was a Metro station less than two blocks from our apartment. Sam figured out that we would have to switch to the right train at Termini. We put our euros in the machine and got our tickets, then waited for the train. Sam noted that the ... read more

This morning, I woke with a sore throat, a clear indication that I was about to get sick. Sam’s sickness had bloomed into full stuffyness, but since we had hit the sack around ten and slept until 11am, the worst was over for him. I knew it was just starting for me. I did not know I would be sick practically for the rest of the trip. The sickness was the first thing I registered. The next thing was the beautiful piano music coming from outside the window. Not having enough strength to bounce out of bed, I listened to that beautiful music a full fifteen minutes before stirring and thought how very “Italy” it felt to wake up to that. We ate a big breakfast, downed a couple of decongestants from our emergency kit, and ... read more

We slept until ten, then woke up and packed. Check-out time was eleven, and our plan was to hit the Boboli Gardens, then retrieve our packs and train to Rome. We ate one last breakfast on our magnificent terrace, finishing off our supplies of fruit and juice, packed up the remaining supplies - olive oil, vinegar, wine, and bit of Tuscan deli meat - and left our packs in the lobby. By the time we hit the Open Door Café for “second breakfasts” - coffee and pastry - it was raining. We decided the Boboli was out - touring an outdoor garden in the rain is just not our thing, no matter how much we wanted to see it. “We pass through Florence twice more on the trip,” I told Sam. “If its sunny we can ... read more

We slept in so late this day that by the time we got going, we wondered if it was worth going to Siena. This feeling was amplified when we got to the train station and, like the day before, could not find the bus stop. Luckily, we did find a tourist info booth. They pointed us to the bus stop, and the nice bus driver on the Siena bus held the bus an extra 3 minutes so we could buy our tickets. We were on our way! The bus ride took the same route as the Chianti van of the day before, and the ride to Siena was about an hour. The bus dropped us off not too far from the central square, which was what we really wanted to see. We headed to the Campo ... read more

This was our first scheduled “early” morning, as we had 9:30 reservations at the Uffizi. We were up early, had some juice and fruit on the terrace, but no pastries this time because I really wanted to try out the coffee and pastries at a bar recommended by a friend and by Tripadvisor - the Open Golden Bar, just across the river from the Uffizi. We made our way there and enjoyed an excellent croissant filled with Bavarian cream, a strawberry pastry and a tiny chocolate/coconut/waffle creation. The view from that place is truly spectacular, but I couldn’t swallow the cost to sit down - it’s about four times what everything costs at the counter to sit by the window! Instead we took a quick peek at the view and ate on stools at the bar. ... read more