Days 6 and 7: Florence Day 6: As I predicted, I woke up this morning with no desire to go to art museums. So I didn't. I went massive church hopping instead and had a good time. I found one that was having a free performance that night (a tenor, a soprano and a harpist). I also went to Santa Croce Church (where Michaelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli, among other studs, are buried.) This particular church had 15 feet of standing water after the Great Floo...

Sorry, the website went down for a day when i originally tried to post this, and then I didn't get back to it. Days 4 & 5: Venice and Florence Day 4; Today was check out of Venice day. In planning this trip, Venice was my 'third wheel'; I didn't have real high expectations for it. However, I really liked it. If anyone is headed there anytime soon, I can give you tips so you don't make the same mistakes I made. Our train to Florence was delayed, delay...

I had a great adventure today. As I mentioned in the last entry, today Susan and I were doing our own thing until 3pm. I was up until 12;30am working on the blog and didn't set an alarm. My sleep hasn't settled into its normal routine yet, and I awoke at 10am. I didn't think I was physically capable to sleeping until 10am. That got me out the door much later than I expected, which was a little annoying. As you would expect, there are Catholic churches all ...

Warning: this is a much longer post than usual! Day 1: Had uneventful flights to JFK and then to Milan, where we had a few hours to kill before taking the train to Venice, so we walked around the neighborhood around the train station. This was mostly done to ward off sleepiness since neither of us slept much/at all on the flight. Took the train to Venice, on which I finally crashed and picked up a couple hours of sleep. Once we reached Venice, we took what ...

Bayeux is a great central location for visiting all 5 Normandy beaches, all the guide books say so. While the town itself wasn't bombed, it is easy to access all the major sites that were targeted. Easy, unless it is a major D-Day anniversary. My last couple days did not go as I had originally planned; I ended up staying in Bayeux both days and not going to the beaches. Originally, I thought I'd hit the events in the various beach towns….parades, ceremonie...