V is for Va-ca-tion in Italy

The other day I mentioned that serendipity is one of my favorite words. Here is another word I love: vacation. Say it slowly and listen to all of its sounds: va–ca–tion. Lovely.

It sounds even better when you say,”Va-ca-tion be-gins on Fri-day.”

Of course, one could say that I am on vacation all the time since I am retired. But no, that’s not true. Time gets filled up with the essentials of living after you get your official AARP card! How did we do all this before we retired?

This Saturday in Florence, I will meet my sister-in-law, Carol; my niece, Christine; and her friend, Inger. Then we are off to our villa in Positano, Tuscany for a week. The villa is close to San Gimignano, a well-preserved medieval town. We hope to visit  San Gimignano at sunset before we retire to recover from jet lag, then visit it again on Sunday.

From Positano we will make day trips to visit various small towns in the region. On one long day trip from our villa, we will explore the Italian Riviera, Pisa, Livorno, and Volterra.

Other towns we plan to visit: Siena, Lucca, Chianti, Montepulciano, and of course, more time in Florence.

In Florence, we will do a bike tour to get our orientation to the city, before spending time over two days to visit the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens, the Ponte Vecchio, Galleria dell’Academia to see the statue of David, and any other sites we can work into the schedule. Of course, cafes, market places, and trattorias are on the schedule, too. I’m afraid we will be typical tourists in the sense that we will try to cram in as much as we can see in a short visit.

On Saturday, Carol and I will leave for Rome by train. Christine and Inger will head back to their homes in Norway.

In Rome, we’ll take the hop-on, hop-off bus to get a general orientation to the city, then over the week’s time, we’ll visit the Roman Forum, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel. We will take a day trip to Pompeii later in the week. Our hotel in Rome, the Hotel Navona, is centrally located in the Piazza Navona.

I am sure we will run out of time before we run out of things to see, but we will do our best to see as much as possible. This will be my third trip to Rome, but I still plan to see all of these sights as a first-timer, with wide eyes and an eagerness to learn everything. I plan to take a lot of pictures for future posts so I can share my experiences with you.

So for now, Ciao. I leave on Friday, April 27. Don’t worry, my posts for X, Y, and Z for the rest of April are ready almost ready to go. Early May will feature some leftover A to Z posts.

I is for Italian Adventure

I was going to write about the beautiful purple iris of spring that remind me of my mom, but a serendipity connection with Michael Housewright of The Blissful Adventurer made me change my mind. Michael wrote about his upcoming trip to Italy, and that inspired me to write about my own upcoming two-week trip to Italy.

In early May, I will meet up in Florence, Italy with my sister-in-law Carol, my niece Christine, and her friend Inger-Anne. We will drive down from Florence (the capital city of the Tuscany region) to a villa in Positano, not far from San Gimignano, the well-known medieval walled city. We hope to wander the countryside, take many photographs of incredible scenery, visit several small towns, sample the local fare, and generally see what we can see.

From our villa, Il Cortile del Borgo, we will take day trips to San Gimignano, Pisa, Lucca, Livorno, Volterra, and Sienna. We also plan to spend two days in Florence. I have been to Florence and Rome before, but this is my first time to visit to Tuscany.

At the end of the first week, Christine and Inger-Anne will leave to go back home to Norway, and Carol and I will travel by train to spend a week in Rome.

We are looking forward to this grand adventure, and I plan to share my photographs and experiences on my blog. In the meantime, I am exploring blogs about travel in Italy, reviewing a bit of history, reading a few novels set in Italy, and reading some Italian memoirs. Can’t wait to go! Ciao!

YOUR TURN

Have you been to Italy? What were some of your favorite places and restaurants?