More pictures - Florence, Venice and Milan

This is my favorite picture of Florence - one of my favorite cities I have visited.

St Mark's Square in Venice - my other favorite city. I think I could live here for a few years.
The picture beside it is the Rialta bridge in Venice. It is filled with shops.

On the left is the Duomo in Venice All of the churches are amazingly beautiful.

The picture on the right is the Monument Cemetery in Milan. It is a very small sample of the enormous cemetery. This is a must see - very emotional.

Pics from Italy Trip

Some pictuers from my trip.

My travel bags - both carry-ons and they were fine for a 12 day trip.

I love the Smart cars! In Rome, there are lots of Smart cars and often they park head into curb since they are so small.

This is St Peter's Square. And the Pope was giving a service when I went past. Notice the TV screens in the second picture so everyone can see him.

This is the Trevi Fountain, shown is the movie 3 Coins in a Fountain - very romantic.

When you get off the subway and go up the stairs you are directly across the street from the Colliseum - amazing! Its so hard to believe that it was built in the 1st century!

This is S - the travel buddy I met on the train from Rome to Florence. We spent a couple days together traveling around. He was cool enough to try on the candy dentures we found in a market - while we were in a fancy restaurant!

We were very lucky to get in to see the original statue of David. This is one of the copies that was in the town square in Florence.

When I was walking around Florence I saw a guy plug his car into this outlet in the public parking lot. Then a guy with an electric scooter plugged his vehicle in - why are we so behind the times in the USA??

More pics to come!

Home at last - with a few problems

As I feared, my flight to Amsterdam was somehow cancelled but the rest of my flights, from Amsterdam to Houston and Houston to Austin were fine and I had my boarding passes. Continental goofed up!
Luckily a nice lady from Alitalia, spent about 30 min. trying to figure out what was wrong and correct it - and she finally did. But the story starts even earlier.
I woke up about 4:45 am so I could check out of my hotel, walk the 3/4 of a mile to the Metro to go to the train station to catch the train to the airport. My flight was a 9:15 am. All went well - until I got to the Metro at 5:20 am - the doors were locked! I walked around for 10 min. thinking that maybe they would open at 5:30 am. Nope!! So I started walking back to my hotel - grumbling since no one mentioned that little fact - and luckily on the way, I saw a taxi (who knows what he was doing at that time since no one in Italy gets up early) Anyway, he took me to the train station and I had to wait abouty 30 min. but got to the airport in plenty of time - except that I had no ticket! After all was figured out, I was on my way. I had a 2 1/2 hr layover in Amsterdam and walked around the airport. It's enormous but very well organized. When you check which gate your flight is leaving from it not only tells you the gate but also how long it will take to walk there.
They also have some small casinos in the airport and yes, I had to lose 10 euros there before I went to my gate.
The really good news is that I had a whole row of 3 seats to myself on the 10 1/2 hour flight to Houston. That was fantastic - room to lie down or spread out all of my "stuff". The flight to Austin was delayed about 30 min but I finally got home about 10:15 pm. Because of the 7 hour time change, I have been up over 24 hours. Hopefully all of those awake hours will quickly get me back on central time.
Again, pics to come! And of course I'm missing Italy a bit - especially Venice and Florence.
I do plan on going back some day.

Last full day in Milan

Today was busy. I thought I would be just wondering around Milan but I actually accomplished things. I had to purchase a train ticket to get from the Metro to the airport so I figured out how to do that. My hotel is about half a mile from the Metro and then I have about 4 stops before I get to the train station-Metro station. I am expecting to leave my hotel about 5:30 am Sunday morning to make my connections. My only concern is that when I checked my flight on Continental to Amsterdam it wasnt listed. I am hoping that is because the flight is not on their airline. I guess I will find out tomorrow.
Then I finally went in to the Prada store (first store they ever had) and saw some nice boots I liked - for 280 euros! I touched them and walked away. I went downstairs in their store where they have kind of a museum of some of their original bags, etc. in cases - a Prada museum - who would have thunk it?
I did a bit more shopping and bought a shirt at the HM store (I always see it advertised in US magazine). It is very reasonable. I think I paid 9 euros.
Then I decided to find then Monumental Cemetery since it had a great write up in my tour book. It is described as" Europes most artistic and dreamy cemetery experience". And it was! I have never seen anything like it - large monuments, statues, a church shaped like a cross with statues everywhere. It is a good reason for visiting Milan. I think it was one of the most emotional sites I have ever seen. I hope some of my pictures show its glory (not "gory")
I then found a grocery store - it is a very good day when one finds a grocery store in Italy! I bought some hard rolls, cheese, wine, and orange, some chocolate and a fruit smoothie (yep, I was hungry) and went back to my room to eat, watch TV and read a bit later.
I was out of reading material and found a couple shelves in a bookstore so I bought a book. It is amazing how important reading is when you do not have anything to read. I was getting a bit tired of Rick Steves "Italy" tourguide.
As a bit of a recap, I was thinking that it would be impossible to be on a high protein, low carb diet here. My diet consisted of the 3 Ps and Cs - pasta, pasterie and pizza and capaccino, chocolate and cookies. When I did try to get some meat on my pasta (veal) I got some ground up veal that was not very satisfying. I did have some good pizza yesterday - with olives. They serve the olives with the pits and I was not sure how to eat them. I watched a man at another table and the olive pits just seemed to appear magically on his plate. I also noticed that they eat their pizza with a knife and fork and then sometimes pick it up and fold it over and eat it by hand. I followed their lead and ended up with a blob of tomato on my shirt. No one seemed to notice but I dont know how since were were all sitting shoulder to shoulder at the tables.
I have to admit I did spent a lot of time at McDonalds. They have a Mc Cafe here with just pasteries and different coffees for breakfast so I started going there since you could sit down. I just did not get in to the stand at the counter drinking your expresso and capaccino although I did it twice. I need to ease into the morning off of my feet!
Steps the last couple days have been around 22.000. I am looking forward to resting my feet for a bit when I get home.
By the way, my travel buddy S met his ex girfriend but there were no sparks. I think they both needed to find that out.
I hope you have enjoyed following my adventures. I know I have missed covering some of my experiences so be prepared when I start a conversation with "Well when I was in Italy"
Hope to be home tomorrow and have pics up in the next few days.

Milan - Day 2

Milan is a big city like Rome so not my favorite. I am trying to keep a positive attitude. I did take a tour today and went to see The Last Supper painting and that was very impressive. The Duomo (largest church) is very impressive. I think they said it is the 3rd largest church in Europe. Outside of the church was another demonstration - this time the shop keepers were on strike. It is an interesting demonstration - almost like a concert. There was African music playing and lots of drumming. At least when I was there it seemed safe.
I am staying at another "free" hotel- the Milan Marriott - very fancy but probably not as fancy as the Hilton in Rome. At least this is walking distance to the Metro which makes it pretty convenient.
It is amazing to see all of the designers stores here. This is a very upscale, fashionable town. All young women have on boots. It makes me laugh because when I was in Rome I wore my sandals (I may have mentioned this already) and the only other person in sandals was a nun. I have seen no sandals since, so they are safely packed away in my suitcase. Even when I dress up in my black slacks I will not wear my black sandals but instead my brown walking shoes. I know they do not match but I think I will get less stares of disgust with these shoes.
I will probably wonder around the city tomorrow but if I had my "druthers" I would catch an early plane home. If it was not for the Last Supper Tour, I would have much rather stayed in Venice.
I keep meeting people from the US that can not believe I am traveling on my own. I do not think they would feel that way if I were a man. A crazy view of the world can limit peoples goals.

It is hard to leave Venice

One more post from Venice. This is such a wonderful city I do not want to leave! I think I might like it more than Florence because it has the added bonus of the water everywhere. I took one more vaporetta ride down the canal to the Rialto bridge and then walked back to St Marks Square. Luckily they had good signs everywhere so I did not get lost.
Yesterday I only walked about17,500 steps and today I am sure it will be less since I will be on boats and a train for much of the day.
As I have walked around for the last week or so, I have been so thankful not to be in a tour. You see people lined up like rows of ducks following someone with a flag all over the towns. It would be so difficult for me to be in that position. My free spirit would be squashed. Even getting lost I love traveling and exploring on my own or with a small group of old or new friends.
Everyone needs to visit Venice - but not on a tour!!

Last Night in Venice

I am loving this free internet at my hotel so am using it when I get the chance. I wish I was staying in Venice another day or two. I enjoy riding the boats, walking around the town and watching people. I did not even go to any museums - but I did get my hair cut!! LOVE IT!!
I walked into a salon and luckily they had time. It was very small, only 3 chairs and one wash station. One girl washed my hair - great job - and then sat me in the seat for the "master" to take over. He really way like an artist. I just told him to do what he wanted - just not too short. He would cut, then gently pull, then cut more. He did some cool cuts - kinda jagged after he cut it blunt. Hard to explain but he kind of cut it to go with my natural curl. Then he abruptly said "stop" (I guess to himself) and he walked away. The girl came back and blew it dry and styled it. I hope to get a pic before I go to bed so I can put it on my blog when I get home. I do not think I will be able to add pics at these computers.
I got my train ticket for Milan - it is so easy to do on the automatic machines, then road the boat-bus around the area. I finally ended up on the island of Murano where they do glass blowing. Unfortunately I was too late to see them do it but I did take a bunch of pics (when no one was looking) at some of the glass the artists made. It was really facinating.
Then I took the boat-bus from the train station to my stop at St Marks Square after dark and again it was magical. I think I have already used that word but it sure describes Venice.
An interesting thing - this morning I was mentioning the table-like things that are all over the place and they use them when water gets high so people can still walk around. When I came out of my hotel, they had started putting them up around the Duamo (church) because that is the lowest part of Venice and there was water on the ground. I will be curious to see if there is more water tomorrow. It will not affect my travel since I go from boat to train but it would be a site to see.
If you have never been to Venice or Florence, I recommend both highly.
More from Milan tomorrow -