September 10 through 15, 2022
When I was younger, my parents used to reference an old movie called "If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium" about some people who went on a whirlwind tour of Europe in just a few weeks (I think; I never actually saw it LOL). Anyway I think about that a lot these days and keep planning to title the blog accordingly but then the "Tuesday" post never quite happens. So let's just call this one "If It's Thursday, It Must Be Italy" 😂 and leave it at that. We do find ourselves losing track of days and dates often, sometimes I'll say to Art "what day do you think it is?" and we'll guess and sometimes we even get it right 😜
We bid farewell to Venice after my birthday and headed to Florence and the surrounding areas. I've kept us busy for the past week 😀 (Art only opted out of two of the 6+ tours I lined up LOL). Among the highlights: we visited the Uffizi art museum which has a vast collection of Italian artists (all the famous ones you can think of - Botticelli, DaVinci, Caravaggio, Michaelangelo, - and then some!); saw the outside and inside of the famous Duomo in Florence, strolled the Ponte Vecchio area, took an all-day trip to see the picturesque villages of Cinque Terre, took a wine tour through Tuscany (I really enjoyed the Chianti 😉), had the best gelato in the world in San Gimigiano (they said it was ...), tried the famous Florentine steak, saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa *and* the statue of Leonardo Fibonacci (whoa), saw The Last Supper painting (did you know you're only allowed to view it for 15 minutes?) and took a day tour from Milan to Lake Como and the charming neighboring villages. Phew!
I have found Italy to be largely friendly but a bit chaotic. The tour guides can be hard to locate, the taxi queues are unclear, the drinks are often lukewarm (including my milk for cereal 😒), ice is hard to come by, and train workers can strike at any moment. But also ... the trains are frequent and go everywhere, the people *try* to speak English to us, and the scenery and landmarks are just beautiful and unbelievably old. Did you know that Italy has more UNESCO world heritage sites than any other country? Art says I should try to see all the UNESCO sites in the world, but I think there are several hundred, so maybe not....?
We loved Venice the best and Florence second-best. We've only seen a day and a half of Milan but it seems more geared toward fashion and money so less of my scene. The boat ride on Lake Como was gorgeous though 💗 Tomorrow I'm going on a train ride on the border of Italy and Switzerland (Art's sitting that one out) which I'm really excited about. [Last time Art stayed back from a tour, he did the laundry, so that was a win-win 💓]
Fun connection: As it happened, Hannah Naiditch and her boyfriend Mickey were also in Florence this week so thanks to Mara, we were able to meet up for gelato! Crazy how worlds collide and how small it makes the world seem 😀 Also apparently no one told them about our sabbatical plan so they were gob-smacked at everything we told them.
Stressful connection: Over the past few months, I had been emailing Rosanne Welch's cousin in Milan for tips on how to plan our time in Italy. He was super helpful and we decided to meet up when we got here. So yesterday we had agreed to meet at a restaurant near our hotel at 9pm. We went to see the Last Supper at 5pm, then wandered around the Milan Duomo area from 6-8pm, then walked back toward our hotel and got miserably lost (in the dark no less). Our maps didn't help, directions from a nearby store didn't help, hailing a cab was useless, even turning my phone off of airplane mode didn't help ("no service" what??) so I had no way of telling Orazio we'd be late if we made it at all 😓 Super stressful! Eventually, I don't even know how, we found our way back by about 9:15pm and there was Orazio and his family waiting outside our hotel! They were worried about us, texted us several times, called the hotel, texted Rosanne (!), etc. We did go out to dinner and had a lovely time (their kids were so cute and loved Art's magic tricks 😉 which seemed to overcome the language barrier) and all was well. We were so exhausted when we got back, Art even slept a full 8 hours!
Next we head to Tromso, Norway for a week! Stay tuned.
Deena and Art
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