This morning we headed off from Rome but had only a short trip to Florence. We were taken in to Florence and went to a leather work outlet where various leather work things were explained to us. Tom and I bought a beautiful leather waste-paper bin! We then went and had a gelato in the square whist watching a puppeteer at work. After that we were joined by a local guide who took us on a walking tour of Florence, including into the art gallery to see and hear an in...

So this morning we boarded our private boat after breakfast and made our way back to the coach for the long drive down to Rome. Tom and I are currently trying to avoid having our head colds develop into bronchitis so we slept most of the way through Tuscany and beyond. The farmhouses were very nice, but the landscape is not as neat as Belgium and Austria. We stopped at a roadhouse along the way for our driver's compulsory rest - it was very crowded, mostly with w...

Our tour group was doing a walking tour of Venice this morning. We did one of those two years ago with the Queen Elizabeth, and we are suffering a little with head colds so we decided to just take our time this morning. There was a soccer match playing just across the canal this morning and the fans really were singing for their teams. Bob thought we'd go in to St Mark's Square with them and then just hang around for four hours or so, but we assured him we'd be j...

This morning we boarded our coach and were taken with a local guide to the shooting locations for Sound of Music. It's very unusual because the movie was a hit with the English speaking world but the Austrians had never heard of it until the tourists started asking about it. Now it has been introduced into their culture. The family names do not get "von" in front of them unless they have achieved something. Von Trapp was in the navy in WWI and sunk an English v...

Venice was shrouded with fog as we waited our turn to enter the sheltered waters. There was another smaller passenger ship also waiting, the Costa Fortuna, and they got precedence to enter the lagoon because the captain was a cousin of the harbour master!!! The view was very ethereal and mystic. When we were allowed off we went on a motor launch ride through the Venetian Lagoon passing the Arsenale, the Church of San Pietro di Castello and St Elena. We saw the ...