Tuscany

We have been in Montepulciano for 4 nights now, with two to go. Tuscany is very pretty, and Montepulciano in particular is a very nice place to stay. Our "agriturismo" is wonderful, basically our own little cottage with kitchen. So we have been cooking Italian food, drinking the local Vino Nobile wine, and enjoying morning runs through the vineyards and olive groves. We've also done a wine tour to a couple of vinyards and cellars, and tasted lots of local cheeses, wines, olive oils, and more. Many of the local food specialties are great, including "panforte" almond & fig fruitcake, "pici" which is like a really thick sphaghetti, and lots more.

Our first day here we managed to arrive in time to watch the Bravio Delle Botti (medieval festival and barrel race) which was really interesting:



We have been taking tons of pictures, it is very difficult to just choose one or two to put up here... Here's a view from near the top of the city at dusk.

Hard to believe we've been away for almost 1 month now, the time is going quickly!

We have been in Florence for 3 nights now and as you might expect we have seen a lot of art. Here is a picture of us at the top of the Duomo, looking out over the city.
Tomorrow morning we leave early for Montepulciano. We plan to get there early enough to see the Bravo delle Botti (Barrel Races) which are one of the town festivals.

Biking in Bolzano

Just a picture from our first day here...

Bolzano

To start out, a picture from Venice:

We have been in Bolzano now for two nights. This may be our favorite city so far... very pretty with mountains covered in vineyards and Austrian style houses. More than half the people here have German as their first language, and many of the restaurants are German style as well. There are nearly free bikes available for rent, great biking paths around the city, a great open-air vegetable market, and several museums. The first day we got here from Venice, rented bikes, explored the city, and hiked up to one of the local castles. Yesterday we took a cable car ride up to Oberbolzen and explored that area. Today being Sunday, most everything is closed except the museums, so we saw the archeological and natural history museums. The first one has the famous Iceman, "Otzi". That was good as there was an audio guide in English. The second one would have been good except it was only in Italian and German...

Tomorrow we plan to bus up into the mountains and then do a really serious hike up into the Dolomite Alps.

Venice

We are in Venice. It is impossible to describe the city in a short posting so I won't even try. But we have taken over 100 pictures in the last 24 hours! Unfortunately I cannot put one here as we are online from an internet cafe, not with our own laptop. But our pictures of Venice look like everyone elses anyway!

We met up with John and Leena last night, and visited the Basilica today. It has been great to spend the day with them and talk about their travels and ours. We had a lovely picnic lunch out at the far end of the city in the park (much less crowded) and are joining them for dinner again in a few minutes.

We also have successfully booked accomodations for our 4 nights in Florence and 5 nights in Tuscany: Wine lovers will be interested that we are staying at an Agriturismo (farmhouse accomodation) a short walk outside the city walls of Montelpulciano. Check it out at http://www.fontecastello.it/agriturismo.uk.php .

Tomorrow morning we head north for Bolzano. German food, and more Alps!

Italy!

It has been a while and we've been busy! We spent three days hiking in the Aosta valley around Bionaz. Fantastic weather, amazing Alpine views.

We stayed two nights in a hostel and then one night at a rifugia up in the mountains, which was a unique experience.

We also had some of the local food specialties: Fontina cheese, which is something like a cross between Brie and Gouda. And Pan Nero (Black Bread) which is a hearty, crusty bread of whole wheat and perhaps other grains. Both are very good. Also tried the local grappa (distilled spirit from wine) which I liked but Claire did not.

Since then we've arrived in Turin, where we've spent most of our time walking around and doing errands. I have spliced a European plug onto our laptop power adapter. Today we are heading off to Venice, but before then we're going to see the Egyptian museum here in Turin.

Heading into Italy

We're in a bit of a rush at the moment as we're about to head off to Italy, but here's a quick update...

On Monday, we traveled from Paris to Chamonix (actually, Argentiere) near Mount Blanc. Tuesday (yesterday) we went on a great hike up into the mountains, saw the glacier of Argentiere, and then cooked dinner in the hostel. Unfortunately the weather has turned very cloudy, raining and cold so our plans to do several days of hiking and take the tram cars and lifts over the mountain to Italy will have to wait for the next trip.

We're going to take the bus through the Mount Blanc tunnel this afternoon to Italy, and hopefully the weather will be better on that side.

We're in Paris!

Claire and I arrived in Paris without any problems on Friday morning. We found our hotel and checked in and discovered that the ground floor of the building had an organic food store! Yay!

After getting organized and cleaned up we headed out to the Eiffel Tower and the Champs de Mars park -- an obvious place to start, since it's walking distance from here. Then we had a picnic dinner in the park, with food we picked up along Rue Cler (a great street for food shopping, just around the corner from the hotel). Picnicing seems to be the way to go for us... great value for the money, and eating outside in the park is great. We got some very nice walnut-and-olive spread for our sandwiches, some fresh chevre, and made some very tasty sandwiches.

After dinner we took the metro to Champs Elysees and did the window-shopping and people-watching thing there. Back to the hotel and collapsed into bed. Jetlag!

Saturday we started at the Musee d'Orsay. That was great -- took longer than we expected, so we didn't end up doing any other museums that day. After a late lunch we did Rick Steve's "Historic Paris" walk around the Notre Dame and other sights in the historic centre of paris.

We had a late (for us) dinner at a Provencal restaurant near the Bastille square, and then did the Montmartre & Sacre Couer walk late that evening.

Today (Sunday) we are taking it easy. Reading and relaxing at the local cafe, and now we are back at the hotel where I've plugged our laptop into the free internet connection.

Today is the first Sunday of the month and many museums are free. Of course, that also means they will be very busy. We'll probably see one museum this afternoon, but other than that, plan to mostly relax, read, and do some trip planning.

We've got reservations for the Paris-Lyon train for tomorrow morning. From Lyon we'll connect through to Chamonix, where we'll be staying for three nights or so and doing day hikes and other stuff around Mount Blanc. Or at least that's the plan for now...

Flying away tomorrow!

We've actually finished everything! Well, everything important and urgent, anyway.

Yesterday was long and busy. We packed up the final load of stuff, cleaned the condo, crammed that last load into our storage units, and took the Flexcar down to Redfin to drop off our keys.

Then we walked to Casuelita's Caribbean Cafe. We piled our backpacks and carry-ons under the bar and had a great early dinner. Habenero prawns, a jerk chicken sandwich with side salad, $5 each, plus $2 each for drinks at happy-hour prices. Obviously inexpensive, and the quality was excellent. Everything was delicious, attractively presented, and the service was friendly and fast. Highly recommended! I ate there a few weeks ago and the salad and soup I then were wonderful as well. The restaurant is nicely decorated with some views out over the water. I'm expecting to eat a lot of great food in Europe, but I don't expect to often get such good food, in such a nice location, at such low prices. We have been spoiled living in Seattle.

After that, bussed south to stay with Jenny and Phillip near the airport for two nights. It's a relief to have this spare day to get organized, send email, and do some trip planning.

The next blog update will be from Paris!