It is morning in a mainland suburb of Venice (way cheaper than staying on the island, and a place for our car, which I am so happy to have back after all that train travel). When we picked up our car in Pisa the day before yesterday, we stopped by the Leaning Tower on our way out of town. I can't resist recording this story about my precocious 6-year-old godson, Julian, though my most devoted readers (hi, mom!) have already heard it. Right before we left Colum...

We walked 20 km today, breaking our previous record of almost 19 km yesterday, but before that all the way back to our first full day in Paris at 18.5. Over half of it we did this morning at the ruins of Ostia Antica, a preserved city ruins dating back to the 7th century BC (though none of those structures remain). They say the Roman empire had its first colony at Ostia, which had been situated where the Tiber River met the sea, though now the beach is 3 km a...

Our time in Rome so far has been a lot like our time in Paris - hot and a lot of walking to jam in lots of amazing sights. The sights in Rome are even more amazing than Paris' however, so old (2,000 years or more in many cases today) it is stunning to think of the technology used to create them. Last night we walked to the Trevi fountain (not that old, comparatively speaking), the Pantheon (super old, and will need to go back tomorrow to go inside), the Pia...

Posting this in Florence, where we are back with the WiFi (pronounced here wee-fee). Hope to get some more photos uploaded to the Flickr too, which I believe you can find at this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/51976701@N06/ Cuccaro Club, our mountain retreat near the Cinque Terre, was perfect. All the charm and quirk and Italian rustic we could ask for. We had to wind way up the mountain to get here, 800 meters up, on small back roads (all paved at lea...