Travel Memories Monday: A Faceless Anonymity

The stunning anonymity of this giant face in Florence, Italy’s Boboli Gardens strikes me even today – a year later and only in a photo this time around. This is one of the few pieces of art that I’m inexplicably drawn to – I’m not an art buff in the least but I turned a corner after well over an hour of just puttering through massive hedged gardens and there it was.
Bizarre.
Huge.
Beautiful.
A strong stone face with pearlized green streaks running through the cracks. If …

Monday Travel Memories: Biking Through Tuscany

I like to think of this as my Secret Garden shot – I pulled off the side of the road while on a day-long Tuscany bike and wine tour (an absolute favorite part of my time in Florence, Italy) for a break. Through a peep hole in the gate was this lushly green and completely serene road. I have no idea where this path leads, but they obviously aren’t keen on visitors and I felt like I was privy to a tiny little Tuscan …

Continued from Round the World Travel Torture
The cab to the ferry to the ferry
The cab makes the 2 kilometer drive to the docks in record time and we tumble out of the vehicle in true clown car style, sling our packs onto our backs and dart into the customs line for a perfunctory passport check where the customs official stamps our passports and rapidly shoos us away to catch the ferry.
It’s still there!
As we jog toward our ferry we pass by a large group of older Eastern European …

One of the less charming features of the Assisi hostel was the lock-out from 9:30am through 4:00pm – that meant that although we didn’t need to leave for the train station until nearly 11:00am we were forced to sit outside of the Ostello de Pace for a couple of hours warming up in the morning sunlight until it was time to catch the public bus to the train station. This bus was the first of the eight legs of our never ending travel day.
One of the reasons I …

I’m actually a bit sad to leave Florence so soon…even though we’ve been here for six days, the city is really beautiful with undeniable charm. I can actually imagine my self living here, which is not something I can say about most big cities. But the RTW trip has to continue! Jenn’s uncle highly suggested a stop in Assisi –in fact he absolutely raved about the gorgeous countryside and that was enough of an incentive for us to add this small city onto the itinerary.
Trains really are one …

Florence is an amazing city with a lot of art and history that I spent several days exploring with Helen and Jenn –and although we like to think of ourselves as high brow ladies, we couldn’t pass up the chance for a girls night on the town. Of the several nights we stayed in Florence we sampled the local markets and cooked up a storm in our own hostel kitchen, making some really delicious meals with the local ingredients from Florence’s Central Market (they also had an amazing! …

Hands down one of the best days in Italy (and a top day on the RTW trip actually) was the Tuscan bike tour we signed up for –it was done on a bit of a whim since the price was a bit high at Euro 60 for the day, but after our long hard day of absorbing art and culture at the Uffizi and the Accademia we decided to splurge. Besides the pretty pictures in the brochure and the note on the Web site to bring sunscreen, we …

Hotel Tina (we stayed here the first two nights before heading over to the Locanda Starlight Hostel– highly recommend both!)with the beautiful Boboli Gardens done, we scheduled ourselves an appointment to see the two signature attractions in the city: the Galleria dell’Accademia with Michelangelo’s David and the Galleria degli Uffizi stocked with the most recognizable Botticelli masterpieces in the world. I can definitely wait in lines when the need arises, but the three of us agreed that it was worth the four extra Euros to schedule appointments (we paid …