Its Thursday, and Hillary and I have booked a bicycle tour of Tuscany for today. This turned out to be the highlight of the entire trip! After bus sing it to the train station, we got a little lost looking for the tour meeting place, and just made it before the vans pulled out. We immediately bonded with our tour guide, Gillian, who was from California. When we asked her, in rapture, how she came to be living in Florence, she answered "I married an Italian." We then lis

Hillary and I woke in our lovely hostel in Florence early since we had reserved tickets to visit the Galleria Accademia - home to the world famous sculpture by Michelangelo , "The David". I had read that the lines to get tickets to enter the museum could take up to 4-6 hours, since the museum has become more of a shrine than a tourist attraction, I didn't feel like taking any chances. It was lovely to be one of the first persons allowed into the museum which held an impres

This morning, after breakfast, Hillary and I ran to catch the bus to Lenno , which is in the same direction as the original town of Como . Our hostel owner had given us an incorrect time of departure, and we ended up having to run up a hill to the bus stop, dragging our matching luggage behind us at great peril to their structural integrity, and jumped on the bus without tickets. In Italy , you have to buy your bus tickets in advance at a newsagents…or, apparently, at certain

I am writing to you from Florence, stealing a quick 30 minutes at the computer in my hostel as I sip a cafe latte. So far, Hillary and I have only spent 3 full days in Italy, and already have accumulated a months worth of memories. I simply love this country. Its food, its people, its pace, attitude - all seem to suit me so pleasantly. I flew to Milan this past Sunday from Krakow, Poland where Id spent a week visiting with my parents and Polish family. It was a lovely wee