I woke up to the sound of birds twittering, church bells announcing the hour and Charlotte talking (which she had been for some time as the first words I heard were "Dad are you going to answer me?") so I guessed she was ready to get up and have breakfast. Now breakfasts in Italy are interesting. For starters toast is non existent (possibly as their bread is either hard as a rock or the "American style" or Pane Bianco when toasted take on the texture and stabilit...

After another hour of white knuckle driving and the puffer fish going into hyperventilation overdrive we arrived in San Romano and had no idea of how to find the farmhouse so after both of the numbers for the English speaking contact Benito ringing out I rang Edoardo our host who speaks pretty well no english and managed to communicate well enough for him to meet us in the village and guide us to the farm which frankly we would not have found in a month of Sunday...

We left Venice this morning with baited breath as we got back in the Opel for another 300 kilometre jaunt to Garfagnana. We came across the usual maniacs on the motorway and there is nothing more disconcerting than being overtaken when you are doing 150 km/h and the car is a blip on the horizon in seconds. We got off at the Maranello exit but as today is a public holiday everything was closed and there was no easy signage to the Ferrari museum so we kept on ...

Well the Easter bunny is universal - what a fit bunny he must be as Santa at least has a team of reindeer to pull his fat arse around the globe. Must be the carrots as opposed to all the bickies and milk - low GI those carrots  The girls got a load of chocolate as well as a Murano glass egg each from Tarn & myself. We got Mum some very swish handmade Venitian chocolate glazed fruit which should see the blood sugar monitor go off the scale. Tarn got some Li...

I woke at 4:25am in what amounted to a beautifully appointed sauna thanks to the aircon going all Italian and Charlotte deciding the middle if the night a great time to snuggle up with Mum & Dad. I only got to bed at midnight after amending our itinerary to forego Sorrento in favor of 3 more days in Firenze. I think we both got Firenzeitis a few days back and yesterday was a downer (apart from the driving stress) and I am sure it was due to leaving Firenze. W...