Funnily enough Karen and her friend Fran were on the same flight to Athens. We picked up re hire car, tried to remember to stop saying "grazie and per favour" and bread the Athenian traffic with mad Greek drivers. Pretty easy actually except most streets near Stan's aunts place are one way.....tricky. We caught up with Maria and Nick, Maria used to run an English school, she is very understanding and has terrific English. Then we headed into the acropolis. Ver...

July 11 th Parks and Popes Stan took us to the Museum of modern art - modern meaning less than 200 years old. Some interesting pieces including one that had ants painted all over pianos and paintings. Very disconcerting. We then headed to the gardens around the Borghese Villa and hired a "quad bike". It was so much fun tearing around the gardens, luckily it had a bit of electric motor back up to help us up the hills. Beautiful expansive gardens, providing so...

Happy birthday Mum July 10 th Discovering Ancient Roma Whilst Stan and Karen forged off in search of modern art, Alex, Cassie and I plunged ourselves into ancient history. We took a guided tour of the Colisseum, Roman Forum and Palantine Hill. Our guide, Mariella, is an archeologist so this is her favourite place. Since the economic crisis jobs in this field are hard to come by. It's an impressive site pl, so big and the fact that it was built without machine...

July 9 th When in Rome do as the Romans do It took us 4 hours on the high speed train, the Frecciagento, to travel back to Rome. It travels up to 210 km/ hr. Very quiet and comfy. The girls read and caught up on their diaries, I caught up on the blog, Stan read and slept. Stan bought 2 books back from home for Alex and she has finished one already. We arrived at the Roma Termini, caught the metro to the Spanish steps and went to our apartment at Via del Babui...

July 8th Sightseeing and shopping In the morning we explored other parts of the main island, mostly the Dorsoduro and Santo Croce areas. So many churches and piazzas. Then we planned to catch a water bus back down the grand canal to San Marco square. However the signage being what it is, and Italians being as unhelpful as many are, we went in the other direction around the port and marina. Oh well, if that's the worse thing that happens to us then it's not to...