Ciao

Today, Velda and I said arrivederci to Italy.

On March 31, Velda and I boarded a plane with 30 other people from our church for a tour Italy. It was a very packed 11 days. Most days we were on the bus at 8AM and were getting off at 7PM to go to dinner. It was a very full schedule. We arrived home yesterday about midday. We were very tired and very happy.

We started in Padua in northern Italy and ended in Naples in southern Italy.

Padua - A city near Venice and has art and architecture produced by some of the great Italian artists of the 14th and 15th century like Giotto and Donatello.

Venice - The City of canals, gondolas, St. Marks, and glass factories. Velda's necklace is from one of the glass factories and yes we took a gondola ride.

Ravenna - A city known for its beautiful 5th and 6th century mosaics. After touring some churches with great mosaics, we saw a demonstration on how mosaics were made.

Florence - The Renaissance City. We went through, many cathedrals and museums. And yes we saw the real David!

Tuscany - We were able to visit a vineyard in the Tuscany countryside for a light lunch and some wine tasting (we tasted 7 wines, truffle oil, and balsamic vinegar that cost more than the most expensive wine). Too bad Scott and Allison were not here. It was a beautiful area and wine maker Luigi was hilarious.

Orvieto - A hill town in Umbria. It sits on a plateau on a huge tufa cliff. It is a very quiet peaceful town due to very limited traffic. It was the only place we could wake up and hear birds and bells and not cars and scooters. The views were spectacular.

Rome - A large and very historic city known as the 'Eternal City'. One could spend months going from church to church or museum to museum or all the little shops and restaurants. Velda and I got fairly good at crossing the street and not getting hit by the thousands and thousands of scooters.

Vatican City - The small independent country and home of the largest church and the leader of the Catholic religion - the Pope, and a huge museum.

Pompeii - A large and amazing archaeologic site of a booming Roman trading city blanketed by 30 feet of volcanic ash by the volcano Mt Vesuvius.

Naples - We did not have time to see anything other than the Archaeological Museum and the treasures they found in Pompeii.

Also we did some very quick shopping... Like the two grandmas buying Pinnochio for their grandchildren.

had some great food and wine....

and met interesting tour people who loved showing their country.

Igor (Tour Director), Gwen and the local tour guide for Rome

We only posted a very few of the over 10 megs of pictures. After briefly reviewing some of them, we can say pictures really do not do the sites and exhibits justice due to their size and complexity.

Health wise - I think we averaged over four miles of walking per day on some very uneven surfaces. As usual, we did not do much resting. Given that both Velda's knees and my back held up just fine.

It was an absolutely wonderful trip... Now back to reality.