Flashback: our Arrival (videos)

You may remember our post from when we arrived here in early September, that we had videos of the event, but we have been unable to upload them due to the very slow bandwidth at our place.  Well, right now we are on an overnighter to a cozy castello with really good bandwidth, so we are finally uploading those videos!

Carmen hit the wrong button at this point and turned off the recorder, but quickly recovered, and the discovery of our new home continues:

You may also remember the saga of the packages of our own stuff we sent to ourselves.  Towards the end of this, Cid is telling us about the contact from Italian customs and what we have to do to get our stuff while we are looking at our rental car stuffed to the gills with the luggage we brought on the plane.

Much has happened since we shot these, and we hope you enjoy this mini-retrospective of how it all started.

Natale in Firenze

Buon Natale cari amici e famiglia.  For our Christmas post, we are going to go back a few days and take you with us photographically on our walkabout in Firenze. 

It is Friday before Christmas and we drive over to the train station in Rignano at 2pm to catch a Regionale into Firenze.  We meet our friend Sandy who teaches English in town and who has offered to be our guide to the Christmas sights.

We first walk over to the Piazza del Duomo, which, being the center of town, is the logical starting point.

From the Duomo, we head south toward the Arno and the Piazza Santa Croce for the open-air mercado di Natale.  Christmas lights are up everywhere, even on a bicycle.  Each street has chosen a different arrangement of styles and shapes to distinguish themselves.  Locals know what street they are on by the style of the lights.

We spend a long time in the mercado, get a snack, and buy some spices we can't find elsewhere.  It is getting dark.

Leaving the mercado, we go down a few streets lit up for Christmas, heading for the river.

We cross over the Arno on the Ponte delle Grazie and walk westward along the river towards the Ponte Vecchio, enjoying the lights on the other side.

tower of Palazzo Vecchio

the Uffizi

the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Firenze, lined with high-end jewelry stores

Crossing back over the Ponte Vecchio, we make our way to the Piazza della Republica, treated to lights, lights, and more lights.

It is now 7:30 and we are getting hungry.  We pass a number of restaurants that haven't opened for dinner yet, so Sandy leads us to a little place where she knows the family that runs it.  After several hours of wonderful food, wine, and conversation, it is time to catch a train home.

We hope you have enjoyed our little guided tour through our photos of our Christmas in Italy.  While we miss being with family and friends for the holidays, we hope that sharing our experiences keeps us all close in our hearts.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Lucca

Earlier this week we took a mini-trip to Lucca, less than a two-hour drive away, and stayed overnight to have time to get the full flavor of this classic renaissance walled city.  We picked the top-rated B&B from Trip Advisor to stay in, Guest Apartment Margherita.  It is in the middle of the ancient town and it was wonderful!  Margherita is a vivacious young woman who spent a lot of time chatting with us and fixing us breakfast despite all the planning she is doing for her wedding in less than a month.  We both agreed that we want to adopt her!

Margherita and us:  say "Fromaggio!"

The kitchen and our bedroom

Just around the corner from our B&B is the Torre Guinigi.  Thirty-eight meters tall, it was built in the 14th century, at a time when newly wealthy merchant families built tall towers on their homes as a prestige symbol, and also as a defensive lookout.  Guinigi Tower has the unique feature of a small grove of trees on top, and so is easily recognized from all parts of the city.

Torre Guinigi, from on top and from around town

Antonio got tired of being bossed around by older brother Lazzaro

As you climb the 230 stairs to the top, there are posters on the walls, done in medieval-art style depiciting the history of the Guinigi family.  At every turn, someone was plotting, warring against, or murdering someone else in the family.  And you thought your family squabbles were bad!







Lucca is most famous for its intact renaissance walls, three layers deep, that entirely encircle the original town.  The main wall is actually an embankment at least 20 meters wide on top.  We rented bicycles and rode the four kilometers around.  Here are some scenes along the way:

Wherever we go in Italy, we see verandas and windows with flower boxes that always make wonderful photo compositions.  Here is a veranda-themed montage from our ride around the wall:

And of course it is getting close to Christmas and the lights and decorations are up, ...

...and there is no shortage of churches to go to--there are 99 of them within the city walls.










Before heading home, we found (as we always are able to do) a cozy trattoria for lunch.

Dubrovnik and return to Venice

Croatian waterfront, viewed from our docked ship 

After a full day at sea, we arrived in Dubrovnik, Croatia on Sunday morning.  Knowing that its fortress walls around the old town are famous as one of the great fortifications of the middle ages, we were determined to walk the wall despite intermittent rain showers.  And we did--all two kilometers of it.  Here are a few scenes along the wall and in the old town inside:

Legend has it that the guardpost in the picture below is haunted by the ghost of Garozdan Ivancic, a fifteenth century soldier who met an untimely end late one night.  He had invited his girlfriend, a Bulgarian dancer, to join him, and distracted by her, he failed to notice the approach of a massive Turkish fleet.  His ghost is invisible to humans but sometimes shows up in photos of the guardpost.

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view...

                         more bougainvillea!

We shared our dinner table every night with Mr. and Mrs. Liu and son Peter, and got into great discussions with them, to the point that one night the waiter had to ask us to leave so they could prepare the next seating.  We were totally blown away when we found out that Mrs. Liu and Peter were in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989 when the tanks and troops moved in.  Peter was 11 at the time; his dad was studying in the U.S. and we could imagine how worried he was.

We arrived back in Venice early Monday morning and disembarked at 9:30.  As when we came, we gave ourselves plenty of time to roam and have lunch.  It was threatening rain when we first set out, and we ducked into a cafe just in time before a downpour.  The rain abated after our cappuccino and espresso, and we resumed our walkabout.  Here is a montage from the end of the journey:

Mykonos and Santorini

Our good ship docked in Mykonos

On Wednesday we sailed into the Aegean, made landfall on the island of Mykonos, and headed into the town for the afternoon.  We were told that the narrow streets were intentionally laid out as a maze to thwart pirates from finding anything, and we can truthfully say it worked for us.  Now the wealth flows the other way, into the myriad souvenir shops.  Of course, the treasures we were after were the classic scenes of Greece, and these we found in abundance.  

Mykonos town

In addition to the expected houses with whitewashed walls and bright blue window shutters and doors, we discovered a familiar friend:  bougainvillea.  Here is a montage of this colorful plant:

With all the modern windmill farms being put in for power generation, I can't resist saying:  what goes around comes around:-)

And then with the sun sinking low in the west, it was time to return to the ship and head off for Santorini.

Our ship, transfer boats; Oia village in background

The island of Santorini is the rim of a mostly sunken volcano with no mooring facilities, so our ship anchored in the lagoon and we went ashore via transfer boats.

We opted for a tour because there are (at least) two towns we wanted to see, Thera (sometimes Fira) and Oia, far enough apart that a tour bus becomes the preferred means of transportation.  Our first stop was Oia.

The ruins of Oia Castle

Santorini is known for its five 15th century Venetian castles.  The one at Oia is totally in ruins, but this is a recent development, the result of a major earthquake in 1956.

Here are more scenes from Santorini:

Supplies go down the cliff by donkey

We could see our ship from many points on the island

Coffee break cliffside

Next up:  Dubrovnik and our return to Venice.

Venice, Bari, and Corfu

There is no mistaking what city this is.

As promised, it is time to get caught up on our travels.  The itinerary of our first-ever cruise had us embarking in Venice, sailing to Bari at the end of Italy, then over to the Greek islands of Corfu, Mykonos, and Santorini, and returning by way of Dubrovnik, Croatia.  We are going to split up our photos into three posts, with this one covering the first leg of our journey.

We took the high-speed train to Venice on Monday morning so we could have a leisurely lunch before boarding the good ship Costa Fascinosa.  I had to stop calling it the Costa Fashionista because my ribs were getting sore from Carmen's elbow.  It was wonderful to have the time to walk around a bit in what may be our favorite city in the world and find a trattoria that we liked.

There were 2700 passengers on the ship, and naturally it took all afternoon to get us all on board.  We finally put out as it was getting dark, sailing right past the Duomo San Marco.

Several cathedrals

Bari is a city on the heel of the Italian boot, and one that we knew very little about.  We declined on taking a tour, preferring to go off on our own to discover who knows what.  Here are some of the things we found:

A fresco outside a small chapel

A massive medieval fortress

An orange tree on a balcony

A statue of a knight's horse, replete with armor

Early on Wednesday we docked in Corfu and went on a tour that started by winding up a mountain road to Achilleion, a palace that was built by Elisabeth of Austria in the 19th century.  As with so many palatial buildings in Europe, the ceilings are amazing.  Here is a montage:

The palace is named after Elisabeth's favorite hero from the Iliad.  Here is a 19th century interpretation of what he looked like.  Can you read the inscription in Greek characters?  It is really not that hard.

We then had time to prowl around Corfu town and have a very nice lunch.  We especially liked seeing Corfu because it was the location of one of our favorite books, "My Family and Other Animals" by Gerald Durrell.

And then it was time to again board the ship and be off to the Aegean islands of Mykonos and Santorini, which will be in our next post.

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