Verona - Our Second Stop

We stayed at a lovely Bed and Breakfast in Verona.

This is a picture of the wonderful food they served each morning and the table we sat at by the window. All of the cakes and pastries are baked right there. You cannot imagine how wonderful the room smelled when we would go in to eat. Not only could we choose anything from the table, they made us the best scrambled eggs we have ever eaten.

This is a picture of Juliette's balcony in Verona, Italy. Romeo stood below this enchanting little balcony as they professed their love for each other.

Of course, the story of Romeo and Juliette was fiction but it's so sweet to think this is what Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote the love story.

We went to see the Verona Arena after seeing the balcony. This is the 3rd largest arena in Italy. It is still used today for Opera performances and special events. The acoustics are perfect inside. The day before we got there, there was a special concert featuring choirs from around the world. We met members of the choirs from Puerto Rico and the Ukraine.


I'm sorry the picture is dark but I think you can make out the details.

This is inside the arena. That little dot near the center at the top is Cari. She climbed all the way to the top to get a view of the surrounding area and to see what it felt like to be a spectator at one of the ancient events.

We Are Home! We are home!

Wow, what a shock to be back in the U.S. Gas prices have soared since we left. Lots of little changes in my surroundings. New flowers in the back yard, my grocery store finished a big remodeling project, a neighbor is redoing his yard. Big palm trees have been taken out, the ground tilled and now we are waiting to see what he does. Maybe a big Italian fountain? I could only hope.

Our trip home was a logistic nightmare. I guess things ended on the down side to make us REAL happy to finally be home. When we checked in for our flight from Milan to London, British Airways had us listed on the passenger list but would not let us board the flight because there was a paperwork glitch through American Airlines. They have a partnership with British Airways and booked that leg of our return trip through them.

I won't go into all the details but what ended up happening is...........we had to fly to Paris, France, spend the night and fly home the next day. We had to fly from Paris to Dallas/Forth Worth, Texas and then to LAX. Great, right? Ugh!!! We checked in at American Airlines in Paris and told our sad story to a wonderful British woman who was working the service desk. She helped us through the process of getting our boarding passes, checking 5 heavy bags, and making our way to the gate. She noticed that Mom was using a cane, so she called for a wheelchair and VIP treatment. She noticed that we were not sitting together, so she called the service desk at the gate and had them change our seats so we were sitting in the first row behind first class which gave us so much more leg room! It was awesome. Mom could stand up and stretch anytime she needed to and we didn't disturb anyone else. AND, no one disturbed us.
Since that flight lasted 10 LONG hours, it was a great place to sit.

When we got to Dallas/Fort Worth, we had to go through customs, so we had to collect our luggage, go through customs, recheck our luggage and make it to the other flight in 1 1/2 hours. As we waited for the luggage to come down the baggage carousel, Mom sat in a wheelchair with a porter at her side the whole time. Well, we waited and waited. Three of our bags arrived but two were missing. Of course, they were the two with all the good stuff in them. All of the art work, gifts, things we had bought for ourselves, wine, some clothes, medications, and the CHOCOLATE!!!! (I know, I know, always keep your medications and chocolate with you.......we learned that lesson.)

In order to go through customs, we had to fill out paperwork on the lost bags. I guess D/FW airport was having a bad luggage day because we were in line with 25 other people who didn't get their luggage either. We finally had the paper work in our hands so we could proceed to customs. We got through that just great. As we walked out of the customs department, we were met by a customer service representative who took our luggage to the re-check place while we proceeded to security.

Security went pretty well. We were frustrated because we were running so late for our flight and we had to go through the entire take-your-shoes off, take your coat off, have your passport and boarding pass handy routine. In Europe, you go through security fully dressed. You do not have to take off your shoes. With Mom in a wheelchair, we got pushed to the front of the line and went through a special section for wheelchairs and other disabilities. That was slick.

When we got to our gate, they had already pre-boarded first class and people traveling with kids, etc. They had called for sections one and two to begin boarding, but they all had to wait until Mom was taken aboard.
Carol had stopped for diet Coke, bottled water, and a snack on our way to the flight, so I waited until she got to the gate to board. We were in section 2 so we were able to get in line and get seated. Whew! We had been so nervous about missing the connection to LAX because of the paperwork glitch over the lost bag.

Tah-dah! We were on the way to LAX, a day late and not a US dollar to our names.

At LAX, Dennis was there waiting for us. It was so great to see him and know that at least this part of the journey was going right. That feeling lasted about 5 minutes.... Mom's suitcase wasn't on the flight... Sooooo, we had to go through the process of reporting her bag and our two lost duffel bags all over again. At the service desk, we were told that they had found Mom's suitcase and my duffel bag and that they were on a flight to Chicago and then on to LA. Oh, boy! Our bags are such good travelers. LOL Carol's duffel bag was still missing. Of course, when these things happen and it just happens to be the bag with all the goodies in it, you can't help but think someone stole the bag. We all did our best to keep up good thoughts and said prayers to get that bag home.

Mom and I had our bags delivered around 2:30 on Saturday. Whew! We were so happy to get them but we felt guilty and sad for Carol. Her bag was still in Luggage Hell somewhere in the US or France. Well, around 4:00 in the afternoon, American Airlines called and gave us the happy news that her bag had been found. It was delivered, intact, around midnight last night. I was in bed when it arrived and since it is 2:52 in the morning and she is sleeping, I have not been able to ask her if everything was OK. I noticed the bottle of wine she had been carrying is on the kitchen counter and there are no wine stains on the packaging so I am fairly sure the bottle didn't break during it's wild ride from Paris to Riverside.

Bryan, Shannon, the grandchildren, and Sam were here with us for a delightful afternoon and dinner. We shared tales, laughed about all of the funny things that happened. I broke the news about buying the designer coat for me and the designer bag for Cari's graduation gift. When we told of the huge discounts we got, Dennis breathed a lot easier. We saved 1800 Euros ( That is about $2970 US dollars) through the grace and kindness of Felipe Asti, the owner of the shop where were go the goodies. He had sold us our things at his cost. We will always be so grateful to him because we would not have been able to afford to buy these things without his kindness.

Now, we are trying to get our bodies back on California time. We were up early yesterday; Carol and Mom around 4:30 and me at 5:00. Everyone is sleeping right now except me. I woke up about an hour ago - wide awake, so I decided to use the time (and the quiet) to write this entry. It is so much easier when I'm alone and things are quiet to collect my thoughts and write.

As I go through the pictures, journal entries, and talking about things with Cari, Carol, and Mom, I will be adding a lot more things to this blog. I hope you will check back and read some of the highlights and our memories.

Love, Kathy

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Only four days left. I just ache when I realize it is time to go home in just four days. I truly have not had enough of this place. It is so wonderful on so many levels.

Today, we went to the Pitti Palace and saw the Palentine Gallery and 6 rooms of the palace that are preserved to show what the place looked like when royalty lived there in the 1800's. What fun we had looking at rooms and rooms of exceptional art work, statues and the palace gardens from several of the windows in the rooms. When we got to the living quarters, it was a treat to see how they lived and the wonderful pieces of art, pottery and statues they collected from all over the world.

Tonight, we are fixing our own dinner. We are having a roasted chicken that Carol picked up at a little food shop near our apartment. We are fixing some fresh pasta that we got at the Central Market a few days ago. Fresh basil, tomatoes, green and red peppers and some fresh mushrooms are going to be sauted and then added to a prepared red sauce and served with the chicken. Yummy.

We have plans to visit a nearby town, Orvieto on Tuesday. We don't think the cooking class is going to happen. Mom can't stand for four hours through the classes we have found. If we don't do that, we will find something special to see in Florence.

We are leaving here on Wednesday, April 23rd in the early evening. We have booked a hotel nearl the Milan Airport for the night. Our flight home leaves there at noon so we won't have to get up at the crack of dawn in Florence, take a 3 hour train to Milan and then stress about making our connections. The hotel has a free shuttle to the airport so I know we will be fine.

We arrive at LAX at 6:30 p.m. Thursday night. A very long day. It will be 3:30 Friday Morning in Milan when we get home. We are going to be exhausted.

I will be writing more about this trip as I go through all of my journal entries, pictures and mementos. I hope you will continue to check back to read about "The Time of Our Lives."

Love, Kathy

Saturday in Florence - April 19,2008

You can tell the weekend has arrived in Florence. The traffic increases tremendously. The sidewalks are incredibly busy, more tour buses run, and the taxi cabs are are racing between pick up and drop off sites.

We went to the Bargello Museum early this morning. It pays to get up early and get to those places by 8:30 in the morning. No crowd and no one pushing you around. There were only about 12 - 15 people there, including us, this morning. Many Michaelangelo and Dante sculptures. Fantastic! We totally loved it.

From there, we walked to Rivorari for the best coffee in Florence. Delicious Cafe Latte at the stand up bar is only 1.70 Euros. If you sit down, the same cup of coffee is 6 Euros. Pays to stand sometimes. LOL

Mom is resting this afternoon so Carol and I are walking the city. We love to do that here. Very safe and we are finally getting the hang of finding our way around.

More soon,

Love, Kathy

Correction

I made a mistake in the last post. The ceiling is 18 feet above us, not 18 inches. LOL Didn't want you guys to think we were getting smushed.

Firenze - Florence, our home away from home

Ahhh........we are back in Florence. What a relief mentally and physically. Our new little apartment is adorable. You have to open a 700 pound door off the street to get into an entry with stairs that lead up to a rickety old elevator. Once inside, we go to the second floor. Our frnt door is right in front of us. We open that and go into a common entry with three doors leading to the individual apartments. We have a small but totally functional place. There is a couch and twin bed in the 'living room', across the room is a little dining table with 4 chairs. The kitchen, I kid you not, is 12 inches deep and 6 feet long. In that tiny space is a dishwasher, trash compartment, and refrigerator/freezer about the size of one in a camper. There is a long, 8 feet, buffet with drawers and shelves that hold the silverware, dishes, pots and pans and the toaster. Amazing that so much stuff is stored in a small space.

The master bedroom has a queen size bed. Shutters cover a double window. There is glass, a 12"ledge and then another set of dual paned windows. Luckily we have that because we are on a busy street. The windows block out most of the noise. Our room is painted a pretty blue, a little darker than robin's egg, the ceiling is about 18"above us and is painted a stark white with an 8"crown mold on the walls. When you look up from the bed, it looks like you are in a blue box with a white lid. LOL

Today, Carol and I walked to the Pitti Palace and saw the Costume Museum. Wow! Clothes from the 1700's to the 1990's. Amazing and beautiful. They even showed the construction process of clothes from the early 1800's. The button collection was astounding. Carol and I were in our glory.

This is our last week in Italy. I'm not ready to leave but I think when the 24th arrives, I will be looking forward to heading back. There is just so much to see and I haven't seen it all yet.

I've learned that I am far more flexible than I thought. More adventurous and not fearful at all. It's been so great to have this experience. I am so fond of the people we have met. A couple traveling with a friend of theirs from Denmark were staying at our B&B in Rome. Skip, Inga and Vittoria are from a tiny village of 200. Skip is originally from Philadelphia. We had a great time with them. Visiting, drinking wine, and sharing experiences. Our host and hostess at the B&B just stole our hearts, Especially Giordana. She was a sweetie pie. Riccardo saved us many times by speaking to our cab drivers on our cell phone and giving much better instructions to the B&B than we could. Thank God for cell phones.

In later entries, I will talk about the lovely differences between Amercians and Italians.

More soon,

Love, Kathy

Still in Rome

We are still in Rome. We have adjusted somewhat to the pace and the fact that we will never figure out where we are in relationship to anywhere we have been. All of the streets are on angles that do not seem to lead back to where we were coming from. So many one way streets that it is a maze.

Our bed and breakfast was advertised as being in a quiet residential neighborhood. No mention that the main ambulance depot was around the corner, the frieght trains run 1 blcok behind us, we are on a major street with busses, motorcycles, and cars rushing by all the time. Also, the Romans are not shy about honking the car horns at every opportunity. So as far as quiet goes, I guess it is relative to the rest of Rome. Luckily, our room as good, double paned windows so we can shut out a lot of the chaos. Our host and hostess, Ricardo and Jordanna are wonderful. We have just fallen i love with Jordanna. She works so hard to make sure everything is just right for us. She has the cutest little girl, Lucretia who is just a few weeks older than Matthew. Darling little girl.

We have everything we need close by. The supermarket, internet cafe, a good restaurant, and the bus and tram lines within 1 block. It is very convenient and worth it inspite of the noise.

We have seem some of the most amazing things here. The Colliseum was such a high light. I stood before it with tears in my eyes. It has such a majestic feel about it and I cannot image that I finally got to see it in person. We took a guided tour which was wonderful because we got a lot of history lessons along the way plus the delightful sense of humor of our guide. Today we are going to Scuderie Del Quirinale museum to see a painting called The Kiss in English,
li bacio in Italian. I know we will see other special piece, too, but we are going especially to see this.

Tomorrow we are going to St. Peters Basicilla to see Michaelangelos, The Pieta which is a statue of Mary holding the crucified Christ. It is number 2 on my list of things I had to see here.

Cari went home on Saturday. She arrived at LAX exhausted but very happy to see Sam. She was not ready to leave Italy. She loves it here so much. I know she and Sam will return someday. Her heart is one half here.

We have decided to leave Rome a day early and head back to Florence. We have rented an apartment near the Duomo which is the center of our comfort zone. It is close to the train station, too, so we can do our day trips easily. Florence will be our home base until we leave for home. We fly out of Milan which is an easy train ride from Florence.

I will take some time, in the next day or so, to tell some funny tales. We have had so many hilarious adventures and I want to write about them so you can laugh at and with us.

More soon,

Love, Kathy

Rome......

We had our first day in Rome yesterday. We arrived the night before but did not go out. What can I say about this city of 5 million? It is crowded, hectic, scary and wonderful all at the same time. The Taxi rides are really scary for me. I cannot watch where we are going.

We saw the Vatican museums and Sistine Chapel yesterday. Wonderful, beautiful and not a disappointment.

Have to go. We are seeing another museum in 1 hour. Will write soon.

Ahh, Florence.......you stole our hearts

We are leaving Florence today after a wonderful week. We had a break early on for 2 days in Paris. That was wonderful!!

We are all healthy, happy and very well fed. It's wonderful because we can eat anything we want because we walk everywhere we go, up to 4 to 5 miles a day. None of us are gaining weight. I think I've lost about 5 pounds do to the walking.

Today, we leave Florence via EuroStar train to Rome. It takes 1 1/2 hours because there is only one stop between here and there. Our new bed and breakfast inn awaits. So far our accommodations have been awesome. Comfortable beds and safe locations.

In Rome, we have reservations for a guided tour of the Vatican and have planned to see at least 2 museums. Cari will leave from Rome to go home. She's not ready to go back to the US. She loves it here so much.

The best thing to happen so far as shopping is concerned is that we met a clothing designer with his own shop here in Florence. He sold Carol and I each leather/suede coats for his cost and Cari a designer hand bag for his cost. He saved us about 2500 Euros which was awesome to say the least. He was just adorable. Very friendly, flirtatious and fun. Totally spoiled us in his shop with champagne while we tried on clothes. It was such a EVENT. We were swept away.

We haven't heard any news from the US so we are getting a little hungry for some information. We can't understand their news shows so we don't bother turning on the TV.

Hope all of you are doing great. I will be posting the pictures of the trip when I get home via email rather than loading them on the blog. Takes way too much time.

Our love to you all!

Kathy

Finally, Time to Write

Greetings from Florence, Italy. We are all healthy, happy and enjoying each minute of the adventure so far. Each day is better than the day before. Each meal is better than the one before ---and so on.

We got to our bed and breakfast in Milan the first night around 9:30. After unwinding by laughing hysterically for an hour, we all got a good night sleep. While there we saw The Last Supper by di Vinci. What a joy. We all go tears in our eyes when we first saw it. We were truly blessed by the experience.

In Milan, we also saw the beautiful Duomo. A very ornate building with amazing stained glass windows. We were impressed with the crowded, busy streets and traffic.

From Milan to Verona and the chance to see Juliette's balcony from the play, Romeo and Juliette. We saw the 3rd largest arena in Italy in the town square and walked through the little town for hours. Our bed and breakfast there was very nice. We would all go back again.

From Verona to Venice. It is just like I expected it to be but on a larger scale. We visited St. Mark's square where Sam had proposed to Cari. Beautiful church there. We saw many beautiful pieces of art work, statues, and of course all of the tiny streets and canels. We took a water taxi everywhere we went which was a fun experience. We stayed in a hotel built in the 1270's. Our room was on the 3rd floor and the size of a medium hotel room. Tiny! No room for our stuff but exciting anyway to experience such an old place.

From Venice to Florence and our beautiful 2 bedroom apartment with 2 bathrooms. We feel like we are staying in a mansion after our tiny little room in Venice. We have enjoyed Florence very much. We all love it here and feel right at home. We took a 2 day trip to Paris, France after being here only a day.

Paris is wonderful. We didn't expect to like it there very much but we all loved it and wished we had planned on more time there. Just too much to see in such a short day. We stayed in a charming hotel in the Latin District so it was Taxi cabs every where we went. I could write a book on the taxi cab experiences. I will do that another time. We are all just so happy to be alive. We went to the Louve and Orsay museums, the Effiel Tower, and on a night time river cruise on the Seine. Lovely!

Back to Florence and more of a normal routine for two days and then another side trip to Cortona where the movie, Under the Tuscan Sky was filmed. It is a lovely little town nestled in the hills. Very quaint, charming and welcoming. We walked through the main part of town and found the main square by their church. We heard two candidates for mayor give their speaches to all of the folks in the square. We could not understand the words but the way they expressed themselves - the way they gave their pitches - was just like in the U.S.A.

Yesterday and today, we have rested, shopped and enjoyed the town of Florence. Tomorrow we are going on another day trip to Cinque Terra. Looking forward to it very much!

That's it for now. I don't know when I will have time to write again. Hope all of you are well. Don't worry about us. We are doing GREAT.