We had it in our plan to visit Florence today and there was no reason to change that plan. It was an hour drive to get there and we managed to park about 10 minutes walk from Piazza Duomo. The crowds were pretty horrendous. It isn’t something we face very often as we travel to some […]

The drive from Bologna to our next nightstop is only 2h but we took a bit of detour. We left the hotel around 1100 and drove to the small town of Badicorte, east of Siena (both further than our accommodation). Our friends Riccardo had asked us to drop in at his friend Marina’s restaurant (and […]

We woke up to messages enquiring on our safety, as there had been an earthquake in central Italy.  We wouldn’t have known otherwise until seeing the TV at the hotel breakfast. We left the hotel around 1000 for a 40 min drive to Ferrari’s other museum in Modena (rather than Maranello). Again, I sat outside […]

Our waking times have been creeping towards more decent times (sevenish rather than sixish). With very little urgency to do things, we made it down to breakfast around 0930. It was a little rushed as the buffet finishes at 1000. We saw a table with a shocking mess on it, a fair amount of unconsumed […]

We checked out from our guesthouse and drove down to Bologna today. The drive through very narrow and remote roads weren’t as worrying today as we didn’t have the same concerns of being led astray by Google Maps. It was a 3h plus journey non-stop but we stopped in Parma for a walk around the […]

Italians aren’t big on breakfast; usually just coffee and maybe a pastry at most. So we were pleasantly surprised by the relatively big breakfast at our guesthouse consisting of packaged toast, egg and some pastries. Our Nepali hostess had suggested that we take the bus 0915 down to Vernazza and then the boat to explore […]

Above: Vernazza on a postcard. We didn’t have time to scale the hills to get such a vista. It was great to have a hotel next to the train station that goes straight to the airport. The train goes every 20 minutes and I just missed that one at 0600. I got to the airport […]

Hotel hassles We drove from Stresa to Milan today, a journey of about 90 mins via the highway and then through the streets of the city.  We had a little shock with the tolls on the highway en route.  The first one was paid on credit card just fine at the exit based on distance […]