Italy Part I: Our initial day in Italy was a bit rough due to my mistake. After deciding not to go into Amalfi due to cost, we voted to keep our reservation in Herculaneum to see the ruins. Prior to leaving Monaco, I booked our train tickets from Herculaneum to Florence. Easy peasy. We would see Herculaneum on Wednesday once we landed in Naples, spend the night and head out on the train the next morning. Only one small issue that I overlooked….Herculaneum was closed every Wednesday for cleaning. I wasn’t sure exactly how or why you’d need to clean ruins, but my daughter the archeologist explained it was very important to keep the roots and undergrowth from destroying the foundations. That knowledge still did not help my situation. We went to the train station in Naples to change the train tickets to later in the day. I was informed the ticket I purchased was non changeable. Next came tears (mine, not the train employee’s). Bill said that if this was the worst “oops” we had on a three month trip then that would be good news. We arrived in Herculaneum and found several other groups of people that had not known the park was closed on Wednesdays either so that made me feel a little better. We walked and walked to our hotel. When booking a hotel online, I do my best to read all reviews and try to find something functional for us but I am never quite sure what we will find when we arrive. We were thrilled to find out our Herculaneum hotel was right on the water and had a pool as well! We also discovered that Herculaneum opened at 8:30am instead of 9:30am which meant we would have two hours in the morning to see the ruins! So all’s well that ends well! We woke up bright and early and were the first ones in line to enter the park. The difference between Herculaneum and Pompeii is Herculaneum was buried in ash while Pompeii was hit with ash and lava. Therefore, when Herculaneum was “discovered” again, it was in much better condition than Pompeii. As we walked through the ruins, it was hard to believe that the city had been buried from 79 AD to the 1700’s. Some of the houses could probably have been lived in today. After our morning in the ruins, we headed back to the train station and made our way to Florence. In Florence, we had booked an Airbnb which are even riskier than a hotel with what you are going to find upon arrival. It was perfect! Located only five minutes from the Duomo in a nice area. The best part was it had a washer and dryer! It was great to take a shower without having to wash our dirty clothes at the same time. I must also give Italy kudos for figuring out electricity and water since I was last here thirty years ago. Back then, there was no heat allowed after 6pm until 6am and hot water did not exist. I also had to straddle a hole to use the bathroom in public bathrooms. Now, we had electricity that flowed all day and night, hot showers and real toilets! I will say the dryer situation was not great but I can’t have everything! Our first evening we went to a local restaurant and had an amazing meal. We are going to gain back the weight we have lost thus far with all this delicious food! The next morning, we went to the Uffizi gallery and saw more paintings of the Madonna con Bambino than one should ever need to see. It was interesting to see the paintings pre-Renaissance versus post-Renaissance though. Those pre-Renaissance folks did not have much spunk. After the Uffizi, we wandered over to Piazza Vecchio to see the Fake David and Fountain of Neptune. By this time, the crowds had definitely started to show up so we made our escape over to the Santa Croce cathedral and we could not believe that more people were not there. All of the famous folks were buried there including Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Machievelli, Galileo, Donatello, Marconi and Fermi. Everywhere you looked, someone famous was buried. The cathedral was massive. One of the biggest we have seen and we felt very small inside. After the cathedral, our feet needed a rest so we took a break back at the apartment and then had another amazing dinner of meatballs and wild boar pasta. Our final day in Florence began with a trip to the Boboli Gardens which looked beautiful online. I am not sure when those pictures were taken but it was certainly not in recent days. We found the gardens underwhelming and in need of some TLC. The highlight was the gelato across the street which we had for lunch. This day was our first day of rain but the rain held off until we had finished the gardens which was lucky. We went to wait in line to go into the Santa Maria cathedral. The cathedral was free admission but the price was waiting in line for hours. Just as we got in line, a woman came by and said she was putting together a tour in the next five minutes so we could skip the line. For $15.00 each, we jumped on the chance to skip the line. The tour group consisted of 10 people and the funny part was that she basically walked us over and broke into the line! I guess if you look official enough and have 10 people with you then no one is going to question you! It turned out to be an informative thirty minutes so we felt our time saved in line was well worth the cost. The next adventure was to see the real David. I had tried to book tickets through the official site but they were sold out for all the days we were in Florence. So, I went to another website and purchased tickets. I was convinced that the tickets would be fakes and that I was secretly supporting some terrorist funding operation but much to our surprise, the tickets were genuine! We got to see David, some more Madonna con Bambino paintings and the first piano ever invented which was really cool. Leg one of Italy completed! We head to Venice tomorrow. Fingers crossed our good weather returns so we do not have to swim through the streets of Venice….though the exercise would mean we could eat more food! Ratings for Florence Overall: 9 Points of interest: 9 Ease of communication: 7 (most people spoke English thank goodness!) Ease of transportation: 7 Friendly people: 9 Food: 10 Cost of living: 7 Weather: 9 Bill’s favorite thing: Santa Croce Cathedral Sally’s favorite thing: Santa Croce Cathedral Ok guys, time for more bill stuff, coming soon is a plains trains and automobiles post.. Should be fairly entertaining.. As we traveled from seville spain to barcelona, we noticed a couple of things we did not expect.. The area was very arid, desert like. Almost like the central valley in california.. Also there were cities about every 15 miles or so.. This is common in pre industrial (re : auto) society worldwide, as that about a good days travel. Most of these cities consisted of low (2 story or so) buildings and houses. These were almost always brown/white in color.. There was almost always a larger church with a substantially taller bell tower. Very often there was a fortification near the town, usually always up on a hill overlooking the city.. As i mentioned this is not what i expected. This is the area of spain called andalucia, it is rich in agriculture (approx 20% of olive oil production worldwide comes from this area). Lots of grapes per sallys pics and citrus.. What i didnt know was that this area was predominantly settled by the invading moors from north africa in the 700’s they built all the towns and the fortifications and rebuilt the agriculture that had fallen into misuse.. Hence the similar looks of all the towns and cities.. The moors maintained control of this entire area until the late 1400s, when isabella and ferdinand were in power in northern spain, which remained predominantly roman catholic during this time frame.. Interestingly enough very little has changed in the smaller towns thru this area since this time, the bigger cities like valencia, barcelona, seville, granada, etc have modernized but little has changed elsewhere.. With one exception..Benidorm, this city is basically the miami florida of the med coast. There are a mammoth amount of really cool architectural high rises there, its a resort city for the madrid citizens.. Please take a look online at this city and be amazed.. Its really amazing after seeing all the monochromatic cities and towns and then this pops up over a hill.. And we drove around in amazement for a while.. So thats all i got at the moment.. A little history.. A little info and one cool little resort town in the middle of nowhere.. If you do visit spain, this area is a great place to visit/explore
1 Comment
Rebecca Smith
9/25/2022 08:40:43 am
Am still laughing at Michaelangelo's resting places vs. the others.... that was a bit extra 🤣 I picture Leonardo saying, "of course you did".
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May 2024
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