Found our Friends

We arrived safely in Italy and caught up with all our good friends from back home. The pictures tell the story of our first dinner out on Saturday night. Well I tried to post some pictures and this machine will not accept them. I had the same trouble yesterday. This morning we got up and took and early morning train to Rome and sure as shit my wallet was pick pocketed by a pro. I had been extremely careful all along and I know it was in my back pocket and the button was done up and my knap sack covered half my big butt but they got it anyway. About 300 euro ... two credit cards which I immediately cancelled and my ID. I guess Lucy will pay for the rest of this trip. A real pain but what can you do???? We are still having a great time and I will try to find a WIFi line and post tomorrow since we have a lot of great pictures to post and a lot more to report on. Till later.

Day 23 - Villa Cacciatore

A little late but I finally found an internet cafe in a tiny little town in the middle of "Nowhere Italy". It is Monday afternoon and I missed posting on Sunday. Lucy spent a lovely Sunday morning shopping in Florence and man o man can one shop in Florence. I found a tiny little authentic leather shop on a back street and talked with the leathersmith ( if that is what you call someon who works with leather?) who showed us pictures of his grand father who taught his father who taught him to tool leather. Finding authentic in any tourist city is hit and miss but this guy was guarantteed authentic because his work shop was his retail shop and he had all kinds of his work spread out from one end to the other of the shop. Real neat.

We then headed out to Radicofini to catch up with the group and it was an ok drive. We started out going north for a half hour and then turned around and headed south towards Rome. The side roads are about as winding as you can get in the back of Italy and this was no exception. A thrill to drive although Lucy has another opinion. We missed our cut off to the Villa and ended up exploring in and around Radicofini for an hour before we backtracked one more time and found the cut off. The Villa is about two kilometres up a gravel lane way that is quite scary to negotiated but we found it and the Villa is fabulous. There are seven bedrooms, 6 baths, a huge dining room table that sits fourteen, swimming pool .... you get the idea.

I just tried to download a pile of pictures and this computer will not accept most of them but I did get a few which are mostly of Radicofini which is the little town near our Villa. I will figure the picture problem out and post a whole pile later in the week.

I come back to this place and try to post daily again and will catch you up on our adventures.

Till tomorrow (hopefully)

Day 22 - Florence

Good bye to Bun and Tom and Hello to Florence.

We got away all right despite a long delay in our flight which almost cost us catching our flight. It was delayed a number of times and when finally called they did not announce it on the speakers so we were sitting in the lounge and hear our name being called as they were waiting for us and we were the last on the airplane. But we caught the flight and are staying in a really nice hotel in downtown Florence. Florence is the tourist mecca of Tuscany but despite all the people it is quite pleasant to walk. 

And the shopping is something else. There are hundreds and hundreds of street shops and everyone seems to specialize in some goods or another. Kinda neat. I took some pictures of some which I found fascinating. Anyone for a "WHOLE" Proscuitto ham per chance? 

We walked for about two hours on arrival yesterday afternoon and then went out for a nice dinner about a five minute walk from the hotel. And dinner was one of the nicest we've had on this trip. A bottle of Brunello later and we were safely tucked into bed.

We are heading down to Radicofoni today to catch up with the others and hopefully there is an internet connection.

Till later today ( actually tomorrow ) since I'm posting for Friday on Saturday morning.