Arrivederci From Italy

I don't know whether I'll ever end up being a blogger because I really don't like to write. But I'll make one more stab at it before I come home. Observation about this area of Italy--it is not easy to get anywhere from here. Hours of travel by car, bus, train, subway and ferry may get you where you want to be. There is no need to be impatient, you'll eventually get there.

Tuesday was rainy, we stayed in and did laundry--I'd bought several new books and enjoyed laying around and reading. Tuesday night we went out for excellent Chinese with Dan's Boeing workmates.

I started this entry from Italy, but lost connections. I'm home now so will finish it up from here. Dan dropped us off at the central train station at 7 on Wednesday morning and we caught the train to Florence. It took about three and a half hours to get there. We walked from the train station to the hotel. We stayed at the Michelangelo Hotel, one of the Star Hotel chain. It was really fancy and included a comfy bed with the Pillow Mania promotion--whatever that was! The hand towels in the bathroom were linen and the bidet came with "intimate wash"--which Dan had picked up at his original hotel and was using for shampoo! I guess it would work!

After we got checked in we took the bus to the Duomo, a beautiful cathedral. There were lots of people around and hundreds of teens in school groups from countries all over the world. But everybody we talked to said the crowds were small compared to the summer. We looked around the Duomo and went to the Duomo Museum. It was really neat and I took a lot of pictures, which I'll try to organize and share. We ate at a local restaurant and I had wonderful four cheese penne and Paul had pesto stuffed ravioli with mushrooms. We fell into bed about 10.

We got up the next morning and ate breakfast at the hotel, they had eggs! Italians don't eat eggs for breakfast--they eat meat and cheese (some of the meats are ugly looking) We took the bus to the city center and walked to the Uffizi Museum. The line was a mile long and someone told us we could get reservations for a few euros more. We had about an hour to kill so we walked to the Ponte Vecchio. It is the only bridge across the river that wasn't bombed in the war. It's covered and has jewelry shops across it.

We went back to the Museum and stayed about three hours. It was really neat and we saw some very famous works of art including The Birth of Venus by Botticelli. We took a city bus around town, nice place to sit down! I think we might have done something else but right now I can't remember what it was--oh yeah, we are dinner and waited for the train. We got back to Naples about 10:30 and Dan and Ray picked us up at the train station.

Will continue the last two days later.