M: One of the advantages of spending a length of time in the same city is that the odd wet day doesn't throw your plans into chaos - and in fact you can plan around predictions of wet weather. The predictions for Wednesday had consistently been for it to be a very wet day - and despite a start that was only moderately damp, it proved the forecasters right. First task was to take our box of mailing to the post office. I set off about 0805 in order to send it on ...

A: Monday: Today we made pasta and tiramisu and had a lovely evening with Elisabetta and Umberto. M: The day delivered the promised rain, so it was a good day to plan to be largely indoors. My first task was to get hold of a box to send some things home in - partly for ease of handling, and partly to leave some space for any purchases here or in Verona or Vietnam. I was at the post office just before 0815, in time to see the first customers and the reside...

A: On Friday we were due at the Uffiizi at 9am with our pre- booked tickets and Rick Steve's audio tour, and after going through security and up the four flights of stairs we were in for a real treat of Renaissance art. Rick Steves had lots of explanations and historical information eg regarding the development of art in the Renaissance from 2-D into more realistic and 3-D images. We wandered from room to room with lots of tour groups and once again reali...

A: Getting our bags from our unit to the Riomaggiore station was quite a feat, and Hercules would have been proud of Mick- he managed to carry the largest ones down and then up a total of 114 steep and uneven stairs but the weather had cleared so this made the task a little easier (M: Something about the bags absorbing less water perhaps? ). Once at the Riomaggiore station it was a train to La Spezia, another to Pisa and a third to Florence . Our landlord Enri...