"Tahia's Italian Audible"

16-November 2023 to 25-November 2023: However, by the time we got to some kind of fork in the expressway, we found ourselves driving towards the center of Firenze with no indication of an airport in sight.

In fact, it seemed like we were about to go through the center of the city before even getting to the Florence Airport, and that meant traffic jams!

I was not happy about the fact that Julie took the phone to check on something just as we got to that fork so I had to make an audible and just head to Firenze.

That said we got to the familiar panoramic point of the city of Florence, where there were lots of tourists and tour buses as well as cars over there, but then we got into the city center proper.

And I couldn’t believe that GoogleMaps was now routing us into the ZTL of Florence as we made our way towards the Florence Airport.

Why did the GPS insist on us going through the ZTL to get to an airport that should be on the outskirts of the city?…

• Days 0-1 (November 15-16, 2023 – Rome, Italy): “Pulling An All-Nighter”
• Day 2 (November 17, 2023 – Rome, Italy): “Getting More Out Of Rome”
• Day 3 (November 18, 2023 – Bagno Vignoni, Italy): “Saturn’s Travertine Rings”
• Day 4 (November 19, 2023 – Bagno Vignoni, Italy): “Prioritizing Pisa”
• Day 5 (November 20, 2023 – Florence, Italy): “The Accidental Tour of Florence”
• Day 6 (November 21, 2023 – Florence, Italy): “Dry History”
• Day 7 (November 22, 2023 – Venice, Italy): “It’s Not Real”
• Day 8 (November 23, 2023 – Venice, Italy): “Not Pulling A Marta”
• Day 9 (November 24, 2023 – Fiumicino, Italy): “Once In A Lifetime”
• Day 10 (November 25, 2023 – Los Angeles, California, USA): “Hectic Travels”

Days 0-1 (November 15-16, 2023 – Rome, Italy): “Pulling An All-Nighter”

After a fairly hectic morning spent packing and trying to get organized for our upcoming trip to Italy, we finally left home at 10:45am as we went to Tahia’s school to take her out early.

We had a 3:25pm scheduled flight to catch, but we knew that we had to get there early in order to smoothly get through check-in as well as the security lines.

Tahia said that she was in the middle of 4th period when we picked her up at around 11am, and we pretty much started driving the 105 freeway towards LAX airport when I realized that I had forgotten to bring my work badge.

This meant that we wouldn’t be able to park long term without having to deal with paying for airport parking.

So at about 11:25am, we turned around and went back home to get my badge, and in doing so, we saw a couple of big flashes of lightning as the weather seemed to be turning for the worse in LA.

This was actually the first time since the dry season began back in Spring that we got any significant rain or storms, and this one seemed to be a bit of a doozy just in time for us to head out of the country for a little over a week.

Anyways, the drive towards LAX pretty much happened uneventfully, and when we got to the 105 Airport Parking, it was fairly busy, but we did our usual thing of dropping off Julie and Tahia to pay for the shuttle while I went to park the car at work.

We opted to do the shuttle this time around so we could avoid the surge pricing on Uber knowing that when we return, it would be Thanksgiving Weekend.

Having been stung by a ridiculous $40-$60 surge pricing on the return leg (it would typically cost around $15-$20 on the way there), we decided just to do it old school even though we knew that this shuttle service was a bit slower on the pickup.

Well, at least Tahia was free so that helped to save another $15 from the expected $45 round-trip fare that we expected to pay this time around.

Anyways, by about 12:05pm, we were shuttled to LAX, where we noticed that the driver actually took the back way to get into the airport complex, which was a bit of a maddening traffic jam as our airport was showing its backwardsness by not having a people mover.

By about 12:55pm, we got through the airport security after having gone through the check-in process with ITA Airlines, which was Italy’s national carrier apparently (gone were the days of flying Alitalia like 10 years ago).

Sure enough as we anticipated in the check-in process, they were pretty strict about the carry-on luggages being no more than 17 lbs and the dimensions being even smaller than what would pass as a carry-on on our domestic carriers.

So we came prepared with that and had to carry our own personal items and backpacks more carefully while paying to check in just one luggage, which was Julie’s big gray one (which had the liquids and other heavier items).

So that worked out, and then we got into the main lounge area for LAX where we had some overpriced (but pretty decent) Mexican food at their food court.

We then got to Gate 133 for our flight to Italy, which was a busy flight, and we were a little worried that boarding wasn’t going to happen at the scheduled 2:25pm given that the crew was still waiting to get onto the plane.

During that time, there was a loud high-pitched alarm that seemed to annoy everyone, and that alarm wouldn’t shut up (and I wondered how many dBs of hearing loss that might have induced).

The crowd clapped when the high-pitched alarm finally stopped at our gate at around 2:35pm though we could still hear some of that alarm continuing to go off at other gates.

Anyways, the crowded flight was mercifully boarded at around 3:15pm, but the flight didn’t take off until about 3:50pm, which was around 30 minutes later than our scheduled flight.

Given the delay, we were worried about it being tight to catch our pre-booked foodie tour in Rome at around 5:15pm so we asked to reschedule it at 6pm.

That actually went by without a hitch, and so that at least bought us another 45 minutes more just to make up for this delay and if there might be other airport-related complications once we get to Fiumicino Airport and beyond.

Well, the plane ride itself was a bit on the rough side as I know I wasn’t able to get any shut eye after being awoken from my nap when the plane did take off so we could eat their served lunch or dinner.

It sucked because after that meal, I couldn’t go back to sleep at all, and there was a baby that pretty much kept crying throughout the 14-hour ride.

So that pretty much made it impossible to sleep, and I wondered if Tahia and I should have had some noise-cancelling headphones since Julie seemed able to sleep.

There was actually nothing good to watch as far as shows or movies were concerned, and I didn’t have AV headphones anyways.

So I pretty much spent some time trying to play some kind of puzzle game called 2048, which was actually quite challenging, and I only got up to like 1024 once but I was never able to get up to 2048.

I kind of knew that when we plane landed at around 2:35am or about 11:35am Rome time, that the jetlag was probably going to hit hard tonight or even tomorrow given that I pretty much pulled an all-nighter on the plane.

So I had that to look forward to in my increasing age.

Anyways, after getting through de-planing and passport control, we then got our luggage while also changing some money (not all of it knowing what a rip off it is at the airport at around $1.23 USD for every 1 euro these days).

And we also got a tourist SIM card on Julie’s old phone, which she wanted to use as a hotspot for her main phone.

Once that was done, at 12:30pm, we then had to wat in a pretty long line for the fixed rate taxi (of 50 euros) to get from the airport to the Campo de Fiori, which was the area where we were staying for the next two nights.

Eventually, we got onto our taxi at around 12:50pm, where we sat with a young guy that was into some American classic rock music from the 80s and 90s.

I was kind of hoping to pick his brain about Italian rock music, but apparently the indie stuff that I might be interested in wasn’t in this guy’s interest.

But he was a nice guy and the 40-plus-minute drive to get from Fiumicino Airport to central Rome went pretty smoothly, and before we knew it, we were already at the Campo de Fiori at around 1:35pm.

It was a good thing that we did take the taxi because this place wasn’t all that obvious to find had we taken the mass trasit route so we were pretty efficient at this time.

Once we checked into the Boutique Hotel Campo dei Fiori, we were then showed to our place.

It took getting around the Campo de Fiori, which was full of restaurants with people at the front trying to get you to eat there, and there were also lots of tented stalls as apparently there was some kind of market going on in the piazza itself.

Once we were shown to our apartment (which wasn’t in the Boutique Hotel property), we got into our spacious apartment and finally got settled at around 1:45pm.

We used this time to finally brush our teeth and get somewhat cleaned up before heading downstairs at around 2:45pm.

The plan now was to do a little sightseeing while there was still some daylight left and the weather seemed to be pretty benign at the time.

We originally planned to do some random walking towards the Spanish Steps on the way to the Church of St Bartholomew on some island on the Tiber River.

But then as Julie was struggling to get her hot spot working in the city center of Rome, we ultimately called an audible and walked past the familiar Piazza Navona towards the Castel d Sant’Angelo, which we didn’t get to do the first time we were here 10 years ago.

We ultimately ambled our way towards the banks of the Tiber River as walked towards the impressive Castel di Sant’Angelo, and we eventually made our way onto the bridge of Sant’Angelo.

It was a pretty impressive structure near the St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.

We ultimately got to the entrance where we made our way to a somewhat short queue to pay for the tickets and then get into the self-tour proper at around 3:35pm.

The self-tour pretty much went around the perimeter of the circular military fortress, which was what the Castel di Sant’Angelo was about.

Then, we circled all the way back towards the entrance, but the barricades were set up to now get us to go down a ramp into the interior of the Castel di Sant’Angelo.

The walkway eventually got us over some bridge with some ruins or old artifacts around us before going up a ramp or “spiral staircase” up towards another final flight of steps leading to the outside again.

From there, we then went through some indoor exhibits, where one showed some of the military arms as well as some rooms with replicas of the Castel di Sant’Angelo from various eras.

After having our fill of one of the indoor exhibits, we then went into another indoor exhibit on the opposite side, where there were some impressive rooms, including some really ornate ones.

Then, we went back to the outside, where it seemed like the weather was threatening to rain (and it even sprinkled a bit) before we got up to some terrace area where there was a bar under red leaves.

There were also some interesting views over the Tiber River as well as the St Peter’s Basilica looking in the direction of the Vatican, which we knew we’d be visiting tomorrow as part of a longer day tour.

This terrace walk pretty much also circled the upper reaches of the Castel di Sant’Angelo before going up some shorter flight of steep steps going into another indoor exhibit area.

This time, the exhibit area with more tapestry-and-fresco-laden chambers and hallways, which were also interesting to check out.

But the grand finale was when the exhibit went up another set of steps leading to a rooftop terrace where there were commanding views across the Tiber River as well as towards Vatican City.

It was quite cold and windy up here, and the darkening clouds that were accumulating over Rome were also starting to cause some sprinkling.

We weren’t sure if we were going to have to suffer some rain during our evening foodie tour, but that possibility was there, where we had forgotten to bring umbrellas.

So we took some time enjoying the nice views over Rome from that rooftop terrace, especially as the lighting was softening rapidly as we were entering the twilight magic hour to take photos both during and after sunset.

Once we had our fill of the top of the Castel di Sant’Angelo, we then made our way back down the levels.

In one stretch, I noticed there was an attractive part of some softly glowing scene of steps fronting archways that looked like something out of an MC Escher drawing.

From there, we opted not to walk the bastion walls, which also went around the Castel di Sant’Angelo, but we already had our fill of this place, and we were quite impressed with the experience.

I could see why Rick Steves gave this place three triangles, and it was certainly well worth the visit, especially since we hadn’t done this on our first tour of Rome 10 years ago.

Once outside the Castel di Sant’Angelo at 4:45pm, Julie and Tahia were separated from me as they pursued the toilet but I didn’t know that.

And while I waited for them, I saw that there was some compelling pink-lit clouds looking in the direction of the Vatican.

I managed to take some more shots from my iPhone (as the Sony mirrorless wasn’t as compelling, and I wasn’t into takiong RAW photos for doctoring and touch ups).

Eventually by around 5:05pm, Julie and I were re-united, and we then proceeded to walk along the snarling city streets of Rome pretty much following the Tiber River on the way to the island containing the Church of St Bartholomew.

That was our meeting spot for the foodie tour, and it was going to be a roughly 30-minute walk.

The skies got dark quite quickly but we still managed to get some compelling photos looking at the glowing Castel di Sant’Angelo before the skies got too dark to retain that twilight charming lighting during the magic hour.

From there, we then pretty much continued our trek towards the Trastevere area, where there seemed to be some commotion on one of the footbridges over the Tiber River.

However, we ultimately went across one of the bridges going onto the island containing the Church of St Bartholomew, and when we got there at around 5:45pm, we patiently waited for our foodie guide while also meeting out tour participants here.

By 6pm, we were starting our tour with a lady named Sebastiana, who was apparently from the Southern California by way of Boston though she had now been living in Rome for the past 20 years or so.

This foodie tour was pretty much a walk into the Trastevere area, which we learned was pronounced “tras-TEH-veh-rey”, which was a combination of two words “tras” and “tevere”, which was literally “across the Tiber River” in Latin.

We learned that it was once a poor area where Muslims and Jews used but over the years, the area became gentrified and had more of a Bohemian vibe to it.

Anyways, our tour started with a stop at 6:20pm at this place called La Trattoria da Enzo, which had fried artichokes and some cold pressed olive oil to be eaten with bread.

The fried artichokes were to be eaten with some fresh buffala mozzarella cheese, and it was quite delicious while drinking some Prosecco with it.

We spent some time getting acquainted with a lady from Norway named Gioeril (where to oe is actually the null-set Norwegian letter) while we met a San Diego couple as well as a Long Island lady named Kenya.

Other tour participants were a couple from Mexico while there was also a guy from France.

With this first stop out of the way, we then walked over to this place called Ristorante Spirito di Vino, which we got to at around 6:50pm.

The thing with this building was that it was apparently what’s left of perhaps the oldest Jewish Synagogue in the World even though the building was not being used for that purpose anymore.

The historical layers were actually below ground, which was where there was the restaurant’s wine cellar, so that was quite an interesting little trip through time.

Once we were out of the cellar and back upstairs, we then had what was called maiale di mazzio, which was apparently a really slow-cooked pork (prepared for four hours!) served with some kind of bread in it.

This was actually one of the more unique things we’ve ever tasted, and I’m not sure that we’d have something like this again.

We also downed this with some red wine called Sangiovesse, which was quite nice, and it was also nice that this restaurant was closed though it was open just for our foodie tours.

Once we had our fill of this spot, we then walked over to a pizza joint called La Boccaccia at 7:30pm, where we each got to try two different kinds of pizza – one with potato and another one without cheese that was all pomodoro sauce.

This, too, was also quite delicious, and it was also probably one of Tahia’s highlights even though it wasn’t like a more traditional pizza.

By about 7:45pm, we then arrived at a deli called Norcineria Yacozzilli, which was a bustling little deli that had quite a few cold cuts and other things on display.

But for our foodie tour, they gave each of us their version of a porchetta, which we never had before, as it consisted of a smooth cured pork on some crispy bread, and one bite of this instantly impressed just about the whole tour.

In fact, I don’t think we’ve ever had porchetta before, but now I swear that we’d probably be looking for it for the rest of the trip let alone while we’re in Italy.

Of course, this porchetta was prepared over several hours (8 hours?!?) and had a nice blend of salts and herbs, and again, I don’t think we’d ever have something like this again nor of this quality as apparently the rest were prepared in 3 hours or less with electric stoves.

We also downed this porchetta with a pretty strong red wine, and we all walked out of there quite happy (as did the family that owns this business seemed quite pleased with our experiences).

Next up, at around 8:05pm, we went to this place called Suppli, which specialized in a street food that was like some kind of fried rice ball with some stringly mozarella cheese inside it.

Again, this was something unique that we hadn’t had before though it probably wasn’t one of the bigger foodie highlights of this tour.

Then, at 8:35pm, we showed up to Rione 13, which was an actual restaurant, and the whole group sat down and had a couple of the pastas that this place served up.

There was one white as well as another one that was red, and it was certainly traditional (i.e. hand made though it can be a bit chewy).

We stuck around until around 9:30pm, when we then walked a couple of stores over to some gelateria called Fatamorgana.

This was pretty much like most gelato joints except we learned from our guide that real gelato places actually are no-frills spots with lots of whipping and mixing of genuine ingredients.

If you see puffy types of gelato that are more ubiquitous, they’re actually made with some kind of powder, which would allow the proprietors to cheat a bit more and make attention-getting sizes and shapes of this type of gelato.

Anyways, this was our last stop, and after saying goodbye to Sebastiana, we then walked over to the taxi stands so we could hail it and go back to our accommodation at Campo de Fiori.

And with that, by about 10pm, we were back at the apartment where we could finally get cleaned up and shower to end off this long day of travel along with eventful half-day of touring.

I’m sure tomorrow will feel like a marathon given the relative lack of sleep that we had been getting, but we were really looking forward to comparing the experience versus our first time here 10 years prior…

Day 2 (November 17, 2023 – Rome, Italy): “Getting More Out Of Rome”

It was 5:30am when I awoke to the alarm, and I could already tell from how my body reacted to the alarm that I definitely could have slept in today.

However, with a looming pre-paid walking tour coming up, we had no choice but to try to get up and fight the sleep deprivation or else lose out on hundreds of euros being spent on this tour to try to maximize our limited time in Rome.

I think having learned from our last experience where we weren’t all that efficient, the way to go was to do one of these guided walking tours, especially since you get to skip the queues at the famous spots, which we definitely intended to hit up today.

Nevertheless, as I grudgingly tried to get up and cleaned up, I did try to fit in some basic blogging and photo chores on the computer though it seemed like my portable hard drive was acting up and some files appeared to have been corrupted.

Fortunately, I still hadn’t deleted my camera’s SD card yet and restored those that I did notice were corrupted obviously, but I think there was one that managed to slip through the cracks.

When Tahia finally got up, she was fretting because she was supposed to submit some kind of group assignment, and there was no way we were going to miss our tours because of this, especially when she decided to watch YouTube shorts at the airport.

There was plenty of idle time back then, and trying to do things last minute was her fault, and we’re not going to have this limited time impacted by her irresponsibility.

Ultimately by about 7:15am, we started to head out, where we promptly got through the Campo de Fiori (already bustling with vendors trying to set up shop in the square itself) and then we got to the main lobby of the hotel to have the receptionist hail us a cab.

It was going to be too long of a walk to the Vatican, and so we wasted no time sitting into one, and he promptly drove us to the entrance of the Vatican, where there was a cafe that was the meeting place for our tour.

We each got a croissant pick-me-up (not the greatest quality but we needed something to hold us over) and Julie got a latte to try to get the caffeine to help.

After that bit of business done, we then sat The Tour Guy personnel, who then instructed us to wait by the walls of the steps as Group 3 for our upcoming tour.

By about 7:55am, we got acquainted with our guide whose name was Paola, and to which Julie thought she looked like Adele (well, at least as far as her eyes were concerned).

Regardless, we learned that our guide has a PhD in archaeology (ala Indian Jones), and we thought to ourselves that she looked pretty young for someone who has a doctorate given how many years of school are required for such a degree.

After we each got our audio guides, we promptly went into the entrance of the Vatican Museums (noting in my mind that the word “museum” was plural so there must be multiple museums here), where Paola took care of some tickets and logistics while we went through security.

From there, Paola guided us through some corridors up the steps where we then went onto a terrace with a nice view of the domes atop the St Peter’s Basilica.

While we were out there, Paola talked to us about what we could expect to see in our tour of the Vatican as well as some of the history involved with this place.

Once we got through the breakdown of what was going on in the Vatican in an overview, we then proceeded to walk back into the corridors and headed towards a huge atrium area, which was called the Court of the Pine or something like that.

It was so named because there was a giant pine cone situated underneath a partial alcove or facade on one side of the massive courtyard.

After a bit of explanation of what the deal was with this courtyard (not a lot of it was retainable though since it was largely verbal and we didn’t have anything on our guide pamphlet talking about this courtyard), we then went back into the corridors.

From there, we then walked up some steps towards one of the higher hallways where there were some impressive paintings in the ceilings as well as some statues flanking the hallways.

Apparently we learned that while all these statues looked like they were all white marble in composition, apparently back in the day, these statues actually had some color to them, and there was one statue left that shows some remnant color on its neck.

From there, we kept going down the hallway past more interesting statues and frames (including one that was an ancient menu), where Paola was telling us that the Romans came up with all sorts of things we could relate to in our modern day lives.

So in that sense, I guess we were seeing how the Romans invented various things like menus, a social life, etc. long before we thought such things were invented in our limited understanding of modern history.

We then passed through the hallways of statues, and then proceeded into a hallway of tapestries, which included one where it did seem like the gaze of one of the persons in the tapestry could follow us as we passed in front of it (ala the Mona Lisa).

Another impressive thing was that a lot of the paintings in the ceilings and walls made some of the statues depicted in the tapestries and frescoes appear as if they were 3-D when in fact they really were just 2-D paintings.

That was really impressive considering that even back then, the artists understood how to use shadows to provide the illusion that things were more 3-D than they actually were.

Beyond the tapestry hallways, we then got into a really impressive hallway that depicted maps of different regions of Italy with some windows showing the Radio Maria tower atop a hill in the background.

Some of the windows also showed reflections of the St Peter’s Basilica domes which made for a nice effect as we were walking through this very impressive hallway kind of reminiscent of the reactions we got when walking through the Hall of Mirrors at the Versaille Palace.

Apparently, a lot of these maps were drawn from the standpoint of the Vatican being the center of the world so that made for some interesting perspectives of what’s what in the Italy maps.

But there were also some city maps of Rome showing how things were back then, especially when things were not excavated in Rome’s “lasagna” where they built layers upon layers as things tended to rise over time with this building practice.

So there were apparently things we know to exist in Rome that people didn’t know about back then as they were probably buried underground.

Anyways, we slowly made our way through this nice hall of geography before going through a couple more impressive chambers of large paintings on the walls and ceilings.

And then Paola took us through some restricted areas leading to a shortcut of the Sistine Chapel, where she left us alone to check out the interesting painting-filled holy chamber.

This spot definitely impressed Tahia as we were oohing and aahing within the Sistine Chapel though no photos could be taken here (and they were real serious about it).

There was only so much that we could take in of the paintings above us, but we did identify the skin of St Bartholomew with the face of Michelangelo on it as well as the Minas demon on the lower right.

Apparently that was a trolling some rival or something that Michelangelo essentially had a go at him for all to see since his face apparently looked just like his rival.

By around 9:35am, we went towards the exit where we met back up with Paola again,

Unlike our guide from 10 years ago, it sounded like she didn’t subscribe to the theory that Michelangelo was gay and the prior guide apparently provided some hints of this in the Sistine Chapel paintings.

I guess since she was the PhD in archaeology, she reacted as if that was probably a bit of revisionist history and we left it at that though in the back of my mind, I still wondered given how Michelangelo’s David was so detailed and maybe made in the image of his “lover”.

Nevertheless, just at this time, there was also a black priest who was announcing something in English about this being a holy place and to have silence as he was leading some kind of prayer.

I noticed that Paola did the cross sign as I’m sure she was a practicing Catholic, especially with this place being the center of the Catholic Church.

By around 9:40am, we then went through another shortcut or restricted hallway leading us through some more corridors where there was no talking and still no photos.

And that photo restriction remained until we got towards the St Peter’s Square, where we could finally take pictures again.

We pretty much walked around the right edge of St Peter’s Square, where the middle of the square was filled with unoccupied seats (similar to the last time Julie and I were here 10 years ago).

After letting Paola take pictures as a family of us in front of St Peter’s Basilica, we then went up to the front of the impressive cathedral while also getting views back towards St Peter’s Square.

We then went into the building where Paola gave us some time to explore before meeting her again at the entrance/exit.

Unlike the last time that Julie and I were here, apparently we were allowed to take pictures inside the basilica, and so we tried to explore as much as we could given the time restriction.

We didn’t go underground into the tombs nor did we do any of the other side chambers as there seemed to be some restrictions for entry to those (i.e. prayer only).

Nevertheless, this cathedral really impressed Tahia (and it takes a lot to impress her these days), so that was saying something about this experience, especially as she has seen other impressive European cathedrals in her travels.

But I’m sure this one blew away her other experiences considering this was the center of the Roman Catholic Church, and it still is the center of the Catholic Church in general to this day.

In any case, it pretty much took all of the time to simply walk the publicly accessible parts of St Peter’s Basilica when time was up, and we were the last three people to return to Paola just at the meeting time some 20 minutes after we had gotten started.

From there, she escorted us out the other side of St Peter’s Basilica to the outside of the columns, which put us back outside of the Vatican City (which is not part of Italy, by the way).

We then went to a gift shop near this exit of the St Peter’s Square, where we had an opportunity to use the restrooms as well as to browse around some curios that were related to the Catholic Church (which we didn’t get since they weren’t cheap).

Next, Paola walked us around a corner towards a couple of vans where our group was escorted towards the familiar Piazza di San Pantaleo (which was very close to our hotel at the Campo de Fiori), and we then proceeded to walk towards Piazza Navona.

The lighting was a bit harsher at this time of day, and she told of a pretty interesting rivalry between a couple of artists where one of them was favored by the head of state at the time.

Meanwhile the other rival had favor with the sister in law, who actually had greater sway over the head of state.

Apparently, one of the 4 guys at the fountain with the obelisk right in front of the church had a disgusted reaction to the church as a sort of a trolling move by the rival favored by the sister in law since that church was done by the person favored by the head of state.

Anyways, after having our fill of the Piazza Navona, we then walked a series of alleyways past some kind of commotion going on with a bunch of parliamentarians apparently and eventually towards the Pantheon, which was busy and against the sun.

We didn’t have time to go inside the Pantheon and its open roof, but Julie and I did go in there 10 years prior and I honestly thought it wasn’t that big of a deal.

From there, we walked more alleyways that were quite busy and lined with cafes and restaurants before ultimately arriving at the famous Fontana di Trevi, which we knew was a notorious spot for pickpockets.

At that point, Paola gave us about an hour for a lunch break (I think the meeting time was on the order of 12:15pm or something like that) though we followed her to a bistro that she was having lunch at.

We had some porchetta (now that we knew what it was) as well as some pizza (which Julie mistakenly ordered the one that didn’t have bufala mozzarella), and we also had a pasta as well as some drinks.

It was a quick meal before we then went into the United Colors of Benetton for an interesting top down view towards the Trevi Fountain before going down into the commotion for a couple of shots from an angle as well as Julie and Tahia going up to the fountain for closeups.

Once we rejoined Paola while also having a snack of cannoli and gelati, we then followed her past some kind of building that used to house the remains of Michelangelo before it was apparently stolen back and put in Florence where Michelangelo was from.

We then walked some more of the city streets towards the Roman Forum, which was a bit of a walk away.

Along the way, we saw the Palace of Emmanuel Vittorio (the first prime minister of Italy, I believe), and this was the familiar building that reminded me of Caesar’s Palace.

Paola joked that some American tourists would make some comment that got the history backwards saying the stuff in Vegas were somehow original or the stuff in Philadelphia or Washington DC actually preceded the domes and columns we were seeing here!

I wasn’t sure if the Americans she talked to in the past were trolling or if they really were that clueless about history, but when you have half the country voting in Donald Trump as president, I guess the depths of American stupidity goes pretty deep.

Anyways, we ultimately went around the left side of the big Caesar’s Palace-like structure as we then went towards the ruins of the ancient Roman Forum.

We went amongst the ruins as Paola was explaining away a lot of how this forum was actually the result of a 40m hill that was removed to make room for the columns and structures of this public area back in Roman times.

Considering that there were no bulldozers, that was quite a major feat of human labor though Paola refuted any notion that the work done to give rise to all these engineering marvels in Roman times was the result of slave labor.

Apparently, she claimed that the amount of skill necessary to pull off these engineering feats couldn’t have been done by unskilled labor and that there certainly had to be craftsmen and professionals at the time that could have pulled it off.

We spent quite a bit of time exploring the ruins of the Roman Forum, which seemed way more impressive now than it did when Julie and I were looking at the ruins from the outside looking in.

I didn’t recall if we actually did go into the Forum complex or not, but with the interpretation given by Paola, we certainly appreciated the experience this time around as opposed to the last time around when we never really considered doing guided tours.

Next, after having our fill of the Roman Forum, we then walked to the Colosseum while checking out some Arc of Triumph Roman style, which actually had apparently the earliest representation of Jews on a historical structure (given the Jewish candle represented in it).

Anyways, the walk to the Colosseum seemed like deja vu though this place was definitely packed with people, and we definitely appreciated the skip-the-line benefit of doing this guided tour.

After getting through the airport-like security, we then proceeded to walk around parts of the base of the Colosseum, where we learned that Il Colosseo was actually a nickname.

Apparently, Il Colosseo came from a colossus statue that was in front of the structure itself, and apparently, this place was popularly referred to the Colosseum in association with this statue.

Its real name was the Flavian Amphitheater (a familiar Greek word), and this was one of those things that Hollywood (as well a bunch of other popular depictions of Roman times) had gotten wrong.

Once that was done, we then walked up the steps and onto one of the aisleways where we got more top down views of the oval interior.

Apparently all the ruins down there were staging areas for gladiators and animals, and that there were apparently sand above that staging area for the actual events that took place.

In fact, we learned that “arena” was derived from latin for sand, which suggested that was the surface of the performing oval, and it’s funny how that word carried over to the popular vernacular to this day.

Julie and I actually never recalled going into the Colosseum 10 years ago, but after having gone through this experience, it was quite impressive indeed, and again with the interpretation from Paola, we definitely appreciated the experience more.

When all was said and done, it was almost 3pm when our tour ended with Paola, and then we proceeded to make our way out of the very busy Colosseum.

On the way out, there was a nice view towards the Roman Forum as well as a closeup of an old Roman sign in the marble saying something in Latin about the Amphitheater Flavius.

That further corroborated Paola’s explanation that the “Colosseum” was nothing more than a nickname that stuck.

Anyways, we ultimately went towards the taxi stands and proceeded to return to the Campo de Fiori at 3:15pm, where Tahia wanted to get back to the room to do some homework.

It actually took a lot more time than expected and I managed to doze off for a nap.

We later learned that the assignments that Tahia was stressing out about weren’t actually imminently due (as their due dates were actually delayed).

Anyways, it wouldn’t be until about 4:45pm when we headed back out on the town, but knowing now the walking routes that we took earlier today, we intended to go to a restaurant called Il Chianti to celebrate Julie’s birthday.

At this time, the twilight ambience was actually quite charming and we checked out the Piazza Navona briefly at around 5pm, which was bustling with people at the time.

Then we followed the familiar alleyways, which were also quite crowded with people, as we headed over to the Trevi Fountain and then to Il Chianti.

However, we learned that the kitchen wouldn’t be open until 7pm, and so we decided to check out the Trevi Fountain again before going over to the Spanish Steps, which wasn’t on the guided tour that we were on earlier today.

It wouldn’t be until about 5:55pm when we got to the familiar Spanish Steps though the twilight ambience was long gone at this point and it was basically a busy square with some steps leading up to a twin-spired church above them.

This scene kind of reminded me of the Sacre Coeur in Paris with the steps leading up to some grand religious building, but we were content to get our pictures and to at least experience the steps before heading back towards Il Chianti.

Along the way, we stopped by some random souvenir shop at 6:10pm so Tahia could get a shirt to commemorate her visit of the Vatican today, and then we ultimately returned to Il Chianti at 6:30pm.

It was still too early for the kitchen, but we opted to just sit and go for some drinks while studying the menu so we could have our dinner and not linger longer than we have to.

It was starting to get a bit chilly outside, but I guess we didn’t think to try to sit inside to avoid all the cigarette smoke in addition to the colder temperatures.

Nevertheless, when the kitchen did open up, we were ready with our order of some truffle pasta, some ravioli stuffed with a lot of pork, and a braised beef along with some kind of mixed salad with buffala mozzarella.

And this was downed with some Chianti wine as well as some Brunello red wine since we allowed ourselves to splurge a bit for Julie’s birthday.

At the end of dinner, we also shared a tiramisu though there were no candles so it wasn’t like we were singing loudly (at her insistence not to) to cause a bit of a scene.

Eventually at about 8:05pm, we were done with dinner, and then we decided to also indulge in a little dessert at the neighboring gelateria just so we could try some Marizotto con Panna or something like that.

It was really nothing more than whipped cream on a sweet open cut bread.

As we were all running out of gas on this long day, we finally returned to the Campo de Fiori at 9pm, where we tried out a gelato joint at a corner of the square before returning to our room at 9pm.

It was definitely an action-packed day, and Tahia still insisted on doing homework even though the due dates have changed.

And the cynical side of me thought this was nothing more than a ploy for Tahia to get onto some toxic chat as well as watching some brain-cell-killing YouTube Shorts.

And so ended this eventful day of appreciate Rome in much more depth than in the past, but tomorrow, we’ll be shifting gears and heading into Toscana as we looked forward to bathing in thermal hot springs for the first time in Italy.

This was definitely something we didn’t think of doing 10 years ago…

Day 3 (November 18, 2023 – Bagno Vignoni, Italy): “Saturn’s Travertine Rings”

It was about 4am when we awoke to the alarm, where none of us really had that many hours of sleep.

And when you consider how little sleep we had gotten over the past couple of days, especially given how little of it we got on the plane, it really felt like we were running on fumes at this point.

Nevertheless, we had a 6am train to catch and so we had to get our stuff downstairs, check out, and then catch a taxi to the Roma Termini Station.

When the taxi driver did show up at 5:15am, I did notice that his fare already started at around 11.80 euros, which seemed pretty steep for a starting rate (we were used to seeing the starting rate be half that over the past couple of days).

We then got to the Roma Termini station where the meter said 15.80 euros was the cost, but Julie gave 20 euros expecting change, which we didn’t get any.

I think this was the first time that we ended up with a more dishonest taxi driver, but I guess these things happen from time to time.

Anyways, it was about 5:50am when we boarded the train Fecciarossa, which was actually bound for Torino, but we were to get off at Firenze Santa Maria Novella.

So we did that though we saw that our seating arrangement was actually not what we thought we booked and we actually weren’t sitting together facing each other according to the ticketed seat assignments.

But we just went ahead and occupied a foursome where just one of the seats was actually ours, and after the first couple of stops (one at around 6:15am and another in Orte at 6:45am), it seemed like we were fine sitting together.

So with that, we saw that the skies were gradually getting brighter though it was definitely cold outside as we could tell from the low-lying fog hugging the large fields of Tuscany.

We ultimately arrived at the Firenze SMN station at around 7:50am, where after grabbing a croissant on the go (and Julie getting a coffee), we then hailed a cab to take us to the Avis station at the Amerigo Vespucci Airport.

This time, there was a fixed rate of 20 euro plus some tariff of 4 euro, and it seemed a lot more reasonable than the 20 euro we paid earlier this morning to get to Roma Termini Station from Campo de Fiori.

It took a bit of time to get to the Florence Airport, which was informally called Amerigo Vespucci, and there the taxi driver dropped us off right at the Autonoleggi for a bunch of rental car offices at 8:30am.

From there, we proceeded to get our car (without insurance as it was a pricey 20 euros per day for basic and some 45 euros per day for complete).

Then, we proceeded to load up the car at 8:55am, which was some black Mercedes Benz (something we weren’t really expecting), though we were having problems with the Garmin Nuvi which didn’t seem to be getting any reception.

So we’d have to log the driving with Gaia GPS hoping that it doesn’t drop a signal throughout the drive.

It also took some time for Julie to get Google Maps going with the SIM carded phone being used as a hotspot for her newer phone to help with the navigation.

And with that, we proceeded to drive out of Florence Airport and south towards Saturnia as we decided that the Cascate del Mulino would be the main destination for today considering it was the most out of the way.

Thus, we headed south along what seemed to be a series of expressways and state roads before getting into some twistier provincial roads on the way directly south to Saturnia.

There were already nice fall colors in the trees of the Tuscan landscape throughout the state and provincial roads though we were looking mostly against the sun as we headed south so that was kind of annoying from a road shots standpoint.

Nonetheless, I was half expecting to drive to Bagno Vignoni first to drop off our luggages before heading west to Saturnia, but apparently GoogleMaps had other plans in mind, and we apparently followed a combination of the RA3 and the E78 towards Saturnia.

Somewhere along the way, apparently Gaia GPS wasn’t working so we missed quite a bit of logging of this drive while the Garmin Nuvi still couldn’t get reception.

In fact, I had also forgotten to bring the correct windshield clip for that device so it seemed like we had brought that Nuvi for nothing.

Anyways, we’d eventually get off the expressways and state roads somewhere near the town of Grossetto, where we then followed a series of provincial roads southeast towards Saturnia.

By around 12pm, we’d finally park the car at a public paid lot roughly 500m from the actual Cascate del Mulino, which were quite popular.

There was a ZTL in front of the cafe and barricade, where we had to make a U-turn, and those things always made me nervous about getting fined so hopefully we didn’t get such a fine trying to make a three-point turn out of that alleyway.

Nevertheless, we paid about 5 euros to park for two hours, and then we paid another 5 euros to get a key so we could put our valuables in a locker by the cafe there.

It turned out that the Cascade del Mulino by itself was actually free to use, and it was already crowded with many Italians enjoying their weekend here.

Lots of them brought lawn chairs, some brought music, and plenty of them were bathing within the many terraces caused by travertine damming up some sections of the stream and causing little pools to sit and relax in.

The water itself was actually a bit on the warm side, but it wasn’t like Icelandic warm or hot.

When we saw that it wasn’t all that obvious to get down to the bottom, we did notice that there was a path that went off to the right (facing down to the bottom of the falls) before reaching a much less steeper path where we crossed the ankle-deep river.

Then we got to the other side of the river where we got nice views of the entire context of the wide Cascate del Mulino, which was backed by some building next to an apparent waterfall.

I couldn’t tell how much of this was real and how much of this was man-made or man-modified, but it was definitely one place that blew up on the socials, and I could see why.

Still, it felt like this place was mostly visited by Italians as there weren’t that many foreigners that we bumped into here except one that asked about how the keys and locker situation worked back at the cafe.

Nevertheless, after getting dressed in swimwear, we then proceeded to take pictures, videos, and try our hand at soaking in the pools and beneath some of the waterfalls.

Looking downstream, some parts looked like they were infiniti pools while Tahia was getting a bit of the ick factor after seeing that there were little red worms in the more stagnant parts of the terraced pools here.

The water also wasn’t warm enough to stay lingering in the pools for longer than we had to so it wasn’t terribly comfortable compared to say the Blue Lagoon in Iceland.

Nevertheless, Julie and Tahia were the first to have their fill of this spot, but I lingered a little while longer with an iPhone in hand so I could try to document what it was like being in the water (while being careful not to dunk it).

I ultimately climbed directly up the waterfalls just to try to experience a bit more of this place before getting up to the cafe to join Julie and Tahia, who had just started to order their lunch.

It was before 2pm when this ordering was made, and it wouldn’t be until about 2:55pm when we were finally back at the car as the food was really slow to come out (especially since they had forgotten to give us lasagna so we had to get that resolved).

The food was actually pretty decent though it was getting close to dinner time, and I kind of knew that it was going to be dark by the time we’d finally get to the Albergo Le Terme in Bagno Vignoni.

Nevertheless, this place seemed to be getting even busier the later it became, which totally boggled my mind as I would have expected the place to be emptying out by evening.

Perhaps the Italians love their sunsets, especially considering that today was a beautiful Saturday afternoon!

When we started driving off, there was actually quite a bit of confusion regarding the GoogleMaps directions and we found ourselves going back and forth from the Cascate del Mulino car park and some random road that it wanted us to go.

However, in this chaos, we ultimately realized that there was a bit of commotion going on at a pullout and overlook, and upon finding a makeshift spot to pull over, we saw that it was a nice contextual view of the Cascate del Mulino.

So I guess all wasn’t for naught regarding this back-and-forth, and we probably would have missed it if not for getting confused and lost here.

In any case, we then proceeded to make the long drive to the Bagno Vignoni where we were staying for the night, but the roads were in a rather beat up shape and I swore that the car bottomed out a few times because of the unexpected dips and bumps.

Everyone was busy sleeping while I was driving, and I myself was starting to get a little road fatigue as a result of all the lack of sleep.

Mercifully we ultimately got to the Bagno Vignoni at around 5pm, but not before getting some nice views of hilltop towns and structures along the vicinity of Val d’Orcia (which was where we farm-stayed 10 years ago).

We actually had a bit of trouble parking at the Albergo Le Terme lot in Bagno Vignoni as apparently this was a definite ZTL, but there was a dedicated lot for the hotel though it was quite packed.

Nevertheless, once we checked in, we then proceeded to bathe in the thermal pools, which were really nothing more than indoor swimming and soaking pools that weren’t anything that special to me.

But they were packed with people as I’m sure they were all killing time before the 7:30pm dinner that I know we had booked for.

The pool area consisted of a rather lukewarm (and somewhat “cold”) 31-33C pool that Tahia spent most of her time in, while Julie and I checked out a 37-39C pool that was a little deeper and had three “waterfalls”.

There was also a sauna downstairs with a similarly-warm pool downstairs, and we soaked in there for a bit though it wasn’t a good idea to stay longer than 10 minutes given the heat and humidity in that sauna room that had the pool in it.

Somehow I managed to stub my toe on the way out of that sauna pool, and I saw that my second toe was bleeding, which I had to wash off.

We then bathed a little while longer in the main pool before going back up to our room at around 6:45pm.

From there, we showered, and then we showed up to our dinner at 7:30pm, where we were led back up to a secondary room near our room which was where we’d be having our dinner for the night.

Unfortunately, as I was seated and trying to pull the chair forward, apparently some kind of metal or wooden splinter jabbed and broke in my middle finger on my right hand.

And I couldn’t get rid of that splinter so it’d pretty much stay there for dinner and perhaps for the rest of the night.

Seemed like I couldn’t buy a break regarding this sequence of calamities on this night.

Anyways, the dinner consisted of an assortment of appetizers along with a pasta and a main with a couple of glasses of wine.

We ultimately got some kind of duck pasta with potato foam or something like that, a wild boar (when they mistaken our order for branzino but we rolled with it), a ravioli, a liver mousse, a delicious red wine octopus, and some Val d’Orcia beans (which Julie had mistaken for green beans).

It was a filling though expensive dinner, and considering that we’re paying about a 15% penalty given the exchange rates, I’m sure we’d going to be feeling the pinch when paying bills next month.

Tahia was getting a kick out of the waiter addressing everyone as “gentlemen” though I understood why he said that since Romantic languages tended to be more male dominated.

So if they addressed ladies and gentlemen, instead of says le donne ed gli uomini or le signore ed i signori, they’d just say i signori (i.e. the masculine plural form).

I know English doesn’t really have this though there are snippets of male dominance in the grammar, the direct Italian to English translation came out wrong in the case.

Anyways, we opted not to have the dessert at the hotel, and we retreated to our room to finally crash for the night.

I was hoping that this might be the first time on this trip that I might finally get at least 6 hours of sleep, but I’m sure jetlag will have something to say about that…

Day 4 (November 19, 2023 – Bagno Vignoni, Italy): “Prioritizing Pisa”

It was 3:15am when I awoke without an alarm, and apparently I couldn’t go back to sleep.

Clearly, jetlag was still a factor, and I must have gotten around 5 hours of sleep since things were a blur last night though I vaguely remembered crashing some time around 10pm.

With breakfast not until about 7:30am, I had some time to kill to try to get all caught up with the blogging and the photo processing for the trip up to this point.

It wouldn’t be until about 6:30am when the ladies finally got up, and then we promptly got down to the ristorante at 7:30am though they were a little late in getting opened up.

During that time, I went outside to do a brief exploration of the main part of the tiny town of Bagno Vignoni, and it turned out that the thermal pool at the center of town was adjacent to our hotel.

I made a note to check out a little more of this town square before going back to the car after brekkie.

However, when I returned to the lobby, I found out that I couldn’t open the door because it was apparently locked, and so I was stuck outside in the pretty frigid weather for the time being.

Fortunately, a few minutes later, the receptionist saw that I was stuck outside, and she helped me to open the door.

Then, I joined with Julie and Tahia for brekkie, where we sat in a charming but tight corner surrounded by wine bottles.

The brekkie was a pretty rich affair of mostly salami, loads of carbs (including lots of sweet ones), and some yogurt, fruits, along with bacon and scrambled eggs.

With all the gluten intake that we were getting throughout this trip, this meal probably put that on a whole other level, and both Julie’s and my own joints were definitely feeling all that inflammation resulting from it.

After having our brekkie, Julie and Tahia went back upstairs to get ready while I went outside to explore the town square a bit more.

The morning was charming in that the thermal pool in the middle of town was steaming, and that steam was glowing against the early morning sun.

By about 8:40am, we were finally in the car though it took some time for Julie’s hot spot to get going (actually it didn’t) due to the spotty internet connection out in this part of Toscana.

So we just drove off and pretty much followed part of the classic Tuscany drive recommended by Rick Steves (though it wasn’t intentional on our part) as we were seeking out the Diborrato Waterfall.

That meant that we were driving in the direction of Pienza, which we at first thought was Montepulciano, but that was further to the east of where we were driving.

Then, we continued more to the north where we continued along some beat up Tuscan roads along with whiffing some smells of fire as lots of farmers here appeared to be burning something (maybe green matter that had fallen already as a result of Fall).

I’m sure with all this bad air quality combined with cigarette smoke from lots of Italians and even some European foreigners while being out and about, our lungs have probably taken a bit of a beating on this trip (and we’re not even half way through yet!).

Eventually, after a series of local road driving on both provincial and regional roads, we ultimately arrived within the town of Colle di Val d’Elsa.

There, we managed to find some parking near the Marziale closer to the south side of town and not the bridge further to the north where their Carrefour was (and where the one-way 2.5km walk along the Elsa River was).

It turned out that we could cut right to the chase so to speak, which was where the end of the 2.5km walk was, and we promptly parked the car in a public lot off the right side of the main road through town at 10:30am.

There were plenty of parking spots at the time, and we saw that the parking machine there wasn’t working, which I later found out was due to the fact that they only collect between April 1 and October 31.

Thus, we promptly walked towards the busy street and crossed it before walking onto the Marziale Bridge itself, where we looked down at one of the Diborrato Waterfalls.

This one was a bit segmented and sloping, and it was clear that we were upstream from more of the waterfalls to be experienced along this path.

So we then backtracked to a private driveway where we then walked down steps to get to the profile of the bottom of this particular attractive waterfall.

At the time, some church bells were ringing, and that kind of gave this place a bit of that European ambience, which is uncommon when it comes to experiencing that with a waterfall.

Next, we followed a path that pretty much went downstream with us, and it didn’t take long before we got to a calm part of the Elsa River where there was one guy fishing and there were also some picnic tables.

It turned out that just downstream of here was the main Diborrato Waterfall, but we could only see the brink of it and not its front.

From up here, it looked rather very difficult to try to get to the front of the falls, and I figured that we’d have to get in the river to do it (which would involve swimming, and that’d be something we wouldn’t touch on this cold morning).

Eventually, I went down the path, which had a deviation that went to some kind of rafting launch point with a barricade, but I went beyond that barricade to see if there’s a path to get at least a somewhat satisfying look at the waterfall.

Well, it turned out that there was an informal scrambling path right along the rocky travertine banks of the river, but then I reached an obstacle that blocked the views of the profile of the falls.

I surveyed and saw that there was a small “island” protrusion but the problem was that it looked real slippery and it was surrounded by some deep water.

While it did seem like with some risky maneuvering that I could somehow hop onto that island without getting wet, if I mess up, I’m under water or at least dunking the electronics, which was not be good.

And so after going back and forth, I ultimately decided to unsling the pack and hide it in one of the alcoves not visible to most of the foot traffic, and then I decided to return to the obstacle to at least climb onto a rock outcrop.

I decided against hopping onto the island because I just didn’t want to get into a bad accident there.

Even still, it wasn’t easy to get up over the rock obstacle as I had to really find the footholds and handholds, and then try to pull myself up.

But eventually, I did get onto the rock outcrop and managed to take some somewhat satisfying profile views of the Diborrato Waterfall, but it was clear that this was pretty much all I was going to see without a drone.

While it did look like there was a ledge on the opposite side of the river that might yield a more direct top down view of the falls, I suspected that the opposite bank was private and perhaps somewhat overgrown.

After all, no one was walking to that side, and there was also what seemed to be a cell tower with forbidden access, I’d imagine.

Anyways, after having my fill of this waterfall, I then briefly explored a little more of the Elsa River Trail going up some steps, skirting a private property adjacent to the trail, and then descending to another small travertine cascade.

Along the way, more people were showing up to this trail, which indicated how popular this place was among some Italian weekenders, I’d imagine.

I also tried to see if there was a similar riverside scrambling path to at least get a decent view of both a travertine cascade and perhaps a profile of the Diborrato Waterfall above it.

But alas, that scrambling path pretty much ended in the water.

Julie phoned me about my whereabouts, and so I pretty much reversed course just as I had sighted some footbridge across the Diborrato River.

As much I wanted to explore more of this place, I turned back knowing that we still had to get to Pisa since we were prioritizing that place since Tahia really looked forward to seeing it.

Thus, I rejoined Julie and Tahia, and then we proceeded to go back up the trail and return to our parked car at 11:45am.

I guess I was glad that I didn’t do the whole 2.5km walk one-way along the Elsa River for this because the main waterfall was a bit of a disappointment given how little of it you could see.

And even with our cutting to the chase, we still spent a little over an hour here.

Anyways, we next drove off towards Pisa, but GoogleMaps pretty much had us driving more rural Tuscan roads, all of which were pretty beat up (I never remembered the road surfaces being this bad 10 years ago) along with the ubiquitous smell of fire smoke.

It seemed like the GPS had routed us directly up towards Siena before having us veer towards San Gimignano, which we wondered if it was worth visiting tomorrow since we were debating whether to do that or Siena.

In one stretch of the road, we saw that we were briefly leaving the Siena region and entering the Pisa region, where some smart ass wrote “sh*t” directly underneath Pisa.

Both Julie and I got a laugh out of that little joke because the word pretty much fit the expression.

Anyways, it would take some more time to drive more provincial and state roads before finally hooking back up with the main expressway somewhere near the Pisa Airport, and we’d ultimately get onto the city streets of Pisa after a bit of a long drive.

I kind of knew that it was going to be a rather long drive back to Bagno Vignoni given how out of the way Pisa was, but we were doing this for Tahia on this trip.

There was a bit of standstill traffic as we were getting closer to the main touristy part of Pisa, and we ultimately decided to park our car next to a service station, which had 15 spots.

After parking our car at around 1:15pm, we then proceeded to walk towards the touristy area, and it turned out that we were pretty much right there!

And like before, we pretty much walked along the main walkway with views of the long field surrounded by an old wall alongside a big domed building, a longer building, and then of course, the Leaning Tower of Pisa itself.

I heard Tahia’s reaction (I thought I heard her say, “Wow!” out of her mouth), and I’m sure this made her Toscana part of the trip as she finally got to see the real thing.

So we all spent some time taking our obligatory photos, and I was also getting a kick out of people pushing the air doing their silly poses with forced perspectives.

But like 10 years ago, I was just enjoying taking pictures of people taking pictures of Pisa with partners doing silly poses as I found that to be funnier and more entertaining than trying to get the gag shots of Pisa itself.

Also like back then, the skies were a bit overcast (and in fact sprinkling a little) during this visit as the weather was definitely changing for the worse (which we’re anticipating to be the worst when we’re in Florence tomorrow and the day after).

Anyways, we pretty much spent the next hour or so walking around the touristy complex where we tried to get as many angles looking back at the Tower of Pisa as we could.

While Julie and I had seen other examples of leaning towers, I guess this one was special in that it was pretty much mostly or all marble, which made it stand out to the other ones we saw like in Bolzano and in Burano among others.

We then tried to see if there was takeaway pizza or something so we could eat on the go knowing that it would likely be dark by the time we returned to Bagno Vignoni.

And we ultimately settled for convenience store sandwiches before returning to the car at 2:25pm.

When we left the lot, I think I ended up paying 5 euro for the slightly more than the hour that we were here, and then we proceeded to head back towards the autostrada.

This time, it seemed like GoogleMaps finally had us going on the expressways back in the direction of Florence before heading straight south towards the part of Tuscany that we were staying in.

And so the drive was pretty much a quick and mostly uneventful affair as I tried to stay close to the faster drivers who seemed to know where the speed cameras were.

It was quite the long drive, and it further highlighted just how far Pisa was compared to where we were staying, and it also affirmed that our desires of getting to Cinque Terre on this trip just simply weren’t practical.

Eventually, we got off the expressway near Sinalunga, and then we proceeded to pay the 7.6 euro toll (which was significantly less than what we’d be charged on the toll roads in Japan), and then we were back on the classic Tuscan drive.

With the fading light of the day, we were pretty much just following cars in front of us as it appeared that most of the drivers were heading in the opposite direction towards perhaps Roma or Firenze.

However, there were a handful going in the same direction as us, and we were definitely trying to get back to Bagno Vignoni before it got dark as the road surfaces here were still not great and we didn’t want to hit a pothole or bottom out on a sinking road in the dark.

That said, along the way, we did make a spontaneous stop at around 4:35pm as Julie spotted an attractive Tuscan estate on top of a hill just as the sun was setting.

There was a sign here saying Palazzo Massaini, and there were a handful of other cars here doing the same thing.

I guess what made this stop attractive was that there were Cypress trees lining the driveway leading up to the estate, and that estate was getting some orange glow from the setting sun, which we only had a few minutes left before the light is gone for good.

So we took what shots we could from here, knowing that we finally got our little signature Toscana shot before heading out, and then we finally resumed our drive.

Along the way, we then went around the charming town of Pienza, which Julie wanted to stop for seeing that it was also another charming town that kind of reminded us of our time staying in Montepulciano 10 years prior.

But we still had to keep going and stick to the plan.

I managed to race up to a line of cars waiting at a bridge well downhill from Pienza, which was single lane, and as they finally started going, I got up to them just before the light went yellow and red for us.

Then, the rest of the way, we got back to the familiar Bagno Vignoni pretty much at the same time that we showed up last night shortly after 5pm, but this time, the lot was practically empty as apparently the Saturday crowd was non-existent on this night.

With that, Julie and Tahia promptly headed back up to the room to see if she had forgotten the towels up there (she was afraid she might have left them somewhere else), and in the meantime, I went out to explore the twilight ambience of Bagno Vignoni.

Sure enough, the thermal pool in the village square was surrounded by nicely lit up stone buildings contrasting the deep blue skies of the twilight, but they didn’t floodlight the pool as I was kind of hoping.

After having my fill of taking more pics of the thermal pool, I then proceeded to explore a bit more of the Bagno Vignoni village, where I followed some footpaths leading to a place called Posta Mariucci, which looked like a pretty posh estate or accommodation.

When I got there, I saw that there was a large outdoor thermal pool that people were using, and it also looked like they had a pretty fancy interior.

I then went towards the car park for that facility, and I noticed that there was runoff going towards a cliff, and that was where I knew that there must be the free thermal baths down below as well as potentially waterfalls worth checking out.

While it was too dark to do that kind of exploration on this evening, I made a mental note to see if I could go check out that the following morning perhaps before breakfast (and if not, then shortly after brekkie).

I then joined up with Julie and Tahia back at the town center of Bagno Vignoni, where we then thought we might want to have dinner at Posta Mariucci, but upon getting to their reception, we heard that their dinner was all booked out.

So it was going to be another dinner at La Terrazza at our hotel once again, but this time we were going to go for different foods than what we had last night.

So by about 5:50pm, we were back in the room, and I managed to spend that time with Tahia in the indoor bath area once again.

This time, the pool area was way less crowded than it was yesterday, and thus it was a bit more relaxing (except for when Tahia tried to splash me in the colder pool).

After that was over (Julie ultimately didn’t join us as she was internetting on my computer), we then went for our 7:30pm dinner.

While waiting for ordering the food and also for the food itself, we were debating about what to do tomorrow as it was going to be yet another busy day since we had prioritized Pisa today and thus tomorrow was going to be packed full of activities.

In one moment, Julie asked the waiter whether we should do San Gimignano or Volterra, and he said he liked San Gimignano.

We kind of knew that Siena would require too much time, and we had already seen it 10 years ago while Tahia didn’t seem all that interested in Siena either.

However, the waiter also recommended this place called Civita di Bagnoregio, and upon looking at the internet for that place, it looked like it was definitely worth checking out as its feature was a footbridge leading to the small town on a cliff hill.

Unfortunately, it was closer to Viterbo, which was even further southeast of where we were staying and further away from Florence where we were returning the car.

So we had to punt that one just like Cinque Terre, Volterra, and other places, and that would have to be a future Italian trip for sure.

Anyways, as far as the food was concerned, we made a conscious effort not to get the same things that we had gotten yesterday.

This time, we got the branzino that we didn’t have yesterday, there was some kind of Cognilia of Rabbit as the chef recommendation today, we also got a dry-aged steak, and a truffle pasta along with a couple of different wines from yesterday (one red and one white).

It turned out that because we got two different desserts – one that was apple but without home made ice cream and another that was a really nice chocolate lava cake that took 20 minutes to prepare (also without mango sorbet), we paid a little more than yesterday.

So again, it was another splurge, and I’m sure paying next months bill was not going to be fun.

In any case, we were back in the room at 9:15pm, and we pretty much crashed for the rest of the night as the debate still raged on about whether we should do San Gimignano, Siena, Volterra, or Civita di Bagnoregio.

We’ll have to play it by ear as we also knew that there was an incoming storm that would heavily affect the Florence part of the trip, and it might even start hitting us as soon as late tomorrow…

Day 5 (November 20, 2023 – Florence, Italy): “The Accidental Tour of Florence”

It was 5am when I awoke to the alarm, which marked the first time that I actually got a somewhat normal amount of sleep.

With this time, I got cleaned up and then got busy with blogging and photo processing, and I managed to get pretty much all caught up when Julie and Tahia finally got up at around 6:30am.

It was around that time that I noticed there was some daylight outside where there were some bumpy looking partial clouds with an orange glow from the sunrise.

Anyways, it wouldn’t be until about 7:05am when I decided to do a little scouting on my own as I intended to check out the waterfall and thermal pools beneath the village of Bagno Vignoni.

It was one thing that I had targeted on visiting, and I kind of suspected where it was after exploring the area around the Posta Mariucci Hotel last night.

But now that it was day time, I should be able to get a little clarity on what’s going on hopefully before our 7:30am breakfast.

So I promptly did that as I immediately walked down towards the public car park before making my way back to the Parco di Mulino towards the lower end of the town of Bagno Vignoni.

Once I got there, I checked out some of the ruins of what appeared to be a former public bath area as well as some channels dug, which seemed to exhibit the prowess of Roman plumbing.

In addition to the former pool spots and ruins of the buildings that were left, there seemed to be just one active channel, where steaming water made its way over a precipice where I could hear the waterfall further downstream.

There was also what appeared to be a pool of ice right in front of a door of one of the Roman ruins, which attested to how cold it got overnight.

I also looked towards an attractive tower atop a hill that was starting to get the glow of the morning sun before it rose into the clouds.

Moreover, I also saw the attractive Tuscan landscape getting some clearing fog against the morning light in a scene that could probably be in a painting I’m sure.

It was about 7:25am when I got down to the trail leading down to the front of the thermal pools and waterfalls of Bagno Vignoni, and I knew that it was going to take longer than expected to explore down there.

So I texted Julie that I was going to return to the breakfast area so we could eat together and then check out these waterfalls after the brekkie and before we checked out and would leave.

By about 7:35am I was back in the ristorante La Terrazza at our hotel where I was the first person there, and I proceeded to eat at the same spot that we had eaten yesterday morning.

I also learned that there was some free wine by the salami and cheeses, and this time I took advantage of it (unlike yesterday morning when I didn’t know about it).

When Tahia showed up, she promptly got the juices and sweets (as well as discovering packets of nutella) while I was already busy eating.

Julie eventually showed up though it was not in time for her to eat some of the gluten free chocolate cake that she was coveting.

Anyways, unlike yesterday when I sampled all the pie-looking things and pastries thinking some of them were quiches, I refrained from getting any of those things except for the croissant, which actually had some sticky stuff on it.

And so we happily had a pretty big meal until Julie headed back up to the room at 8:30am because Julie said she had to do her business.

But knowing that it would take her some time, Tahia and I both went to the Thermal Pool in the center of town before heading down to the Parco di Mulino.

I was showing Tahia some of the Etruscan and Roman ingenuity concerning the plumbing here, and it seemed to have left an impression on her.

I also showed her the frozen water by one of the ruins, which also seemed to impress upon her in a very visual way just how cold it got here overnight.

By the time Tahia and I made it down to the top of the trail leading down to the front of the falls and some of the pools below, Julie caught up with us, and thus we finally got to tour the bottom of Bagno Vignoni as a family.

As we descended the fairly moderately steep trail while getting another load of the Tuscan landscape further downhill, the trail then curved back towards the waterfalls after keeping right at a fork.

We then got to a dead-end at the fork, where we got to see the profile of the cascades revealing that there were definitely pools further below.

There was also some interesting ruins and grottos perhaps acting as some kind of drainage or something that was tied to the structures at the top of the cliffs here.

Next, we proceeded to go down to the next point of interest, which consisted of a couple more grottos with cages blocking their entrances as well as a wet area where the runoff went across and created shallow pools and puddles.

It was down here that there was a closeup of some of the cascading thermal waterfalls as well as more evidence of Roman engineering near the lookout area down here.

The view of the waterfalls or cascades here continued to be more of the profile variety, but we also managed to get a closer look at the front of the top of the waterfall, which was clearly the rest of that runoff from the town bath area.

Thus, I could see that this area here could very well have been either man-made or man-modified (possibly since Etruscan times) so it might have gotten the status of Cascata delle Marmore, which was also one of those Roman created waterfalls.

So should it count as a legit waterfall? That was a bit of a tough call.

Anyways, we then continued to backtrack to the fork and then continue down the trail leading to another dead-end where this time there was a nicely colored pool fronting more cascading waterfalls next to some more Roman infrastructure or grottos.

We spent quite a bit more time down at this part because that pool was so alluring given its pronounced color though the pool was also quite cold to the touch.

We figured that the further downstream you go from the thermal pool by the town square of Bagno Vignoni, the colder the water gets, and thus I’d imagine that no one would really consider bathing in these “free” pools, especially in the cold temperatures of November.

After having our fill of this spot (people shots and all though Tahia was really trying to be a troll in our efforts to get shots down here), we then proceeded to descend even further.

That was when we got to more Roman infrastructure as well as another pool and the base of the trajectory of the cascading waterfalls.

Down here, the pool was even more elongated, but it was also clear that this was the end of the walking for our exploration of the bottom of the Bagno Vignoni.

By this time, it was about 9:25am when we started to head back up to the village, where there was one couple that started to come down (we were pretty much all alone until this point).

By about 9:40am, we made it back to our room, where we promptly grabbed our belongings, then went down to the lobby area to check out, and then Tahia watched the luggages as I went to go get the car.

There were also other people doing the same thing so it was actually getting mildly busy out here at the time.

But by about 9:55am, we finally left the Bagno Vignoni and then pursued the Bagni San Filippo, which was another thermal waterfall attraction that we targeted on this visit.

We had to do this before going all the way towards the Siena area to check out the San Gimignano town, which was something that Julie and I hadn’t done in our first visit to Italy.

Anyways, the drive further to the southeast towards Bagni San Filippo was another scenic affair of getting through more rolling hills and the odd cypress tree rows leading to some estates.

We spent time taking plenty of roadside shots along the way before finally getting to the town of Bagni San Filippo, where a narrow one-way road led down to some parked car parking spots.

We ultimately got to our spot at around 10:25am though I had trouble trying to work the parking machine since the credit card machine didn’t seem to be working.

Thus, we just winged it with the car situation as some cars had paid tickets while quite a few others didn’t.

Then, we proceeded to walk on the trail leading below some dry travertine cliffs before curving around back towards the steaming Balena Bianca (White Whale) as well as a temporary office.

There was a person manning that little office where we had to surrender 2 euros per person to a pretty friendly Tunisian guy that didn’t really speak English.

Nevertheless, he definitely explained to us in Italian (and I was able to understand some of what he was saying) that this place was beautiful though we had to be careful of footing.

Indeed, he wasn’t kidding as we continued down the trail because the trail was indeed a bit on the slippery side and we had to really look for rocks that could help with our footing.

But ultimately we got down to the impressive Balena Bianca formation as well as some neighboring thermal springs that was showing more of a greenish travertine color.

There were some people bathing near a cage where it seemed to be getting the warmest water over there, but some of the neighboring falls and formations were on the cold side.

Clearly, the further away from the one thermal spring you got, the colder the water became.

At this point, Julie and Tahia chilled out near the warmest of the waters while I did a little more exploring as I knew that there were more views and more cascades further downstream to check out.

Indeed, as I carefully continued my descent on the slippery trail, I managed to check out some terraces beneath the White Whale formation as well as the front of more cascades and waterfalls making for nice shots.

Upon seeing this formation and its waterfalls I thought to myself that this could exceed the Saturnia experience.

While there wasn’t as much water to bathe around, I could tell that Julie and Tahia appreciated the fact that there weren’t any of those red worms that we saw in the Cascate del Mulino at Saturnia.

Nevertheless, as I continued further down to the end of the main part of the White Whale formation, I then saw that the trail kept going further downhill.

I promptly followed that path as the scenery started to have a little less of the travertine formations, and I ultimately got to where there was a smaller double waterfall in the main stream.

It looked like the trail actually continued on further downstream, but the formations seemed less and less and there seemed to be more overgrowth.

So I considered this to be my turning point, which was about 11:25am, and then I rejoined Julie and Tahia back at the main thermal pools and cascades roughly 10-15 minutes later.

They were having some fun putting some clay on themselves ala the Blue Lagoon in Iceland experience, and I even managed to put my feet near where the water was the warmest.

Upon lingering here for a few minutes more, I couldn’t help but to notice that there seemed to be more English-speaking visitors here as opposed to Italian visitors.

That was another contrast to the Saturnia experience, where there seemed to be mostly Italian visitors on the day of our visit a couple of days ago.

Once we had our fill of this spot, we then made our way back up to the car park but not before the Tunisian at the temporary office urged us to keep our rubber bracelets as souvenirs (upon seeing that we were about to return them).

By about 11:55am, we made it back to the car, and then we proceeded to make the fairly long drive towards the town of San Gimignano.

Regarding this waterfall, we had debated yesterday whether to target Siena or this town or some other Tuscan towns like Volterra, but the reality was that we were glad we only chose just one, and it was San Gimignano since we hadn’t done it before.

It was also along the way to the rental car return near the Florence Airport, which was important because time was not on our side and whatever we’d visit necessarily had to be brief, especially given our scheduled 4pm drop-off time for our rental car.

Anyways, we pretty much followed along some familiar roads along mostly the SS2 through Tuscana though GoogleMaps wanted us to return to Bagno Vignoni to get around the closure of a stretch of the SS2.

I didn’t understand why they wanted us to do that because I swore that everything was a dead-end over at Bagno Vignoni.

So we pretty much had to backtrack and take the familiar roads that we had taken yesterday to get around Pienza before rejoining the SS2 near San Quirico d’Orcia.

Then, we were back on the main road leading through some other towns before ultimately reaching an autostrada that was going around the city of Siena.

It wouldn’t be until around 2pm when we finally reached the impressive walled town of San Gimignano (which I informally called “Gimini Crickets”) and its plethora of towers, and we managed to find parking at the P2 lot over there.

Then, we quickly walked into the gate near the P2 lot and proceeded to follow the walled and shop-lined corridor leading to the main piazza surrounded by the signature towers of Sam Gimignano.

Apparently, these towers were a show of particular wealthy families who tended to build higher and fill their egos the wealthier they were.

But we ultimately just chilled out at the main piazza as well as lined up for the famous gelato shop over there even though we were on limited time.

By the time we got our gelato perhaps some 15 minutes later or so, we then checked out the adjacent piazza where there was a church and some museum entrance along with a couple more towers.

Then, Tahia had to use the restroom while Julie and I took a few more photos waiting for her before deciding that it was getting late as it was already 3pm at the time.

Knowing that it was supposed to be about an hour drive back to the rental car return, we were cutting it pretty close on the way back to the Florence Airport vicinity.

Indeed, it was about 3:10pm when we were leaving Sam Gimignano (completely forgetting the punto panoramico that we thought we were going to check out), and then GoogleMaps stated that it was about to be around 4:10pm by the time we’d get to our destination.

And so we promptly drove the roads back to the expressway leading us back in the direction of Firenze, and things were going along pretty smoothly as we were even making up time.

However, by the time we got to some kind of fork in the expressway, we found ourselves driving towards the center of Firenze with no indication of an airport in sight.

In fact, it seemed like we were about to go through the center of the city before even getting to the Florence Airport, and that meant traffic jams!

I was not happy about the fact that Julie took the phone to check on something just as we got to that fork so I had to make an audible and just head to Firenze.

That said we got to the familiar panoramic point of the city of Florence, where there were lots of tourists and tour buses as well as cars over there, but then we got into the city center proper.

And I couldn’t believe that GoogleMaps was now routing us into the ZTL of Florence as we made our way towards the Florence Airport.

Why did the GPS insist on us going through the ZTL to get to an airport that should be on the outskirts of the city?

Well, after driving through some cobblestone alleyways and tight streets, we eventually got near where Julie’s GPS said the airport should be and it turned out to be a random alleyway in the middle of the city!

I was royally pissed off at this point when I learned that Julie thought this was the Florence Airport when in fact we should have been routing to the address on our rental car confirmation.

In fact, someone must have trolled GoogleMaps because this was nowhere near the Florence Airport, and now we had to eat some heavy fines for driving through this ZTL zone without authorization.

When we finally got straightened out with Julie finally routing to the actual address on our confirmation, we saw that we had to fight traffic to get out of the city center, and then out to the rental car area.

By this time, it was well past the drop-off time of 4pm and we weren’t going to get to the car rental lot until around 5pm!

So now I was worried about dropping the car off late and the charges associated with that, and I was also having a hard time finding a gas station to top off the car (so we were going to eat some fees with that).

Moreover, those unknown ZTL fees were definitely going to hurt, and thus it seemed like were about to get hit with a triple whammy.

After what seemed like forever to even get out of the ZTL (I swore we were near the Duomo as well as some piazza near that spot at some point), we finally got back to the main road and then headed towards the airport.

It was definitely getting darker as we followed a cop out of the city center, then along some interesting embankment before getting to even busier roundabouts as well as a self-service gas station that wouldn’t take my credit card.

Then, when we got to the approximate location of the correct address, we couldn’t find the entrance to the rental car center.

So when we circled back, Julie insisted that I pull over at a bus stop and try to navigate our way to the car rental spot.

But as we were fumbling with the iPhone, someone tapped on our window, and it turned out to be the bus driver parked right by us.

So with that, we had to leave hastily, and then when we got to the next roundabout, we were getting blinked and honked though we weren’t sure why.

So I just turned right into some quieter industrial street from that roundabout, and then we finally figured out that we had to use the auto nav in the car to get back to the rental car center.

Once we did that, we then drove back onto the familiar busy streets again, past that bus stop, and then back to the familiar roundabout.

Then, we pretty much drove back to the same spot, but now the auto nav had us keep going as we realized that the autonoleggi was across the street!

Indeed, thus we finally turned right this time, and then made our way across the street and into the familiar rental car area, where we promptly pulled into a barricade and we finally arrived mercifully at the Avis dropoff at around 5:10pm.

At that point, I learned that our rental would be at least $422 or something like that (way more than the $232 we paid because we were being charged by the kilometer after some 160km or something like that), plus we were getting hit with fuel penalties.

In the end, I wasn’t sure whether it was better to book the way we did or to do unlimited (probably the latter), but in any case, at least we finally made it back to where we needed to be.

And now we had to hail a cab after I took a much needed restroom break.

By 5:25pm, we finally left in the taxi, where it was predicted that the taxi fee would be between 30-40 euros depending on traffic (something I could definitely appreciate at this point).

As we were driving through the rush hour traffic and into the city center proper, I noticed that we were passing by some town wall remnants, and then I got a kick out of seeing a familiar looking arch in the middle of a roundabout or two one-way streets.

In fact, I swore I saw that arch before because we drove by it earlier when we were being led astray by Julie’s false directions for the Florence Airport.

Heck, as we were driving through the busy pedestrian streets in the heart of Florence, we eventually went by the happening Republic Square (something I didn’t recall seeing 10 years ago) and we even got to the Ponte Vecchio before hanging a left.

Ultimately after around 25 minutes of driving, we got to the Hotel degli Orafi at 5:50pm, and we were charged about 32 euros pretty much as predicted by the driver when we left.

It sure seemed like we were burning through our cash on taxi fares, but given the adventure that we had driving around Florence, I guess time was of the essence, and this option made the most sense.

By about 6pm, we got settled in our spacious room (though it didn’t have a view of the Arno River because we were too low and there were scaffoldings), and we could finally put an end to that driving and transit adventure.

Heck, we probably spent 90 minutes longer than we were supposed to, and who knows if we could have even made it to the overlook of the Piazza Michelangelo at sunset, which was happening.

And in hindsight, we probably should have done the lookout from there even if parking was hard to find at the time, especially since it didn’t seem like we were getting charged extra for returning the car after the scheduled time of 4pm.

Anyways, after getting settled, we then headed back out into the city at 6:20pm, and we went looking for a pizzeria since Julie had a craving for it.

It turned out that her preferred options were closed, and we ultimately went to this place called Pizzeria o’Vesuvio, which was quite empty when we first showed up at 6:40pm.

We could clearly see that this place had a wood-fired oven so we were definitely getting the real deal with the pizza here though we were kind of suspicious why this place was so empty.

Well, after we order a pizza of margherita with the crust stuffed with riccotta cheese along with another one called Pizza o’Vesuvio (tomatoes, spicy pepperoni, and buffala mozzarella cheese along with a caprese salad, the place got busy pretty fast after 7pm.

So I guess we had just beat the rush, which allowed us to be pretty quick about our pizza dinner.

It was just enough food for us, and the whole meal itself costed less than 50 euros, which was quite a bargain compared to the roughly upwards of 100 euros on just about every other place we had eaten at throughout this trip.

Indeed, aside from the margherita pizza lacking basil (though we saw it on pizzas served to other people), we left the place fully stuffed at 7:25pm.

Now, we were ready to do a bit of a night tour of Florence (even though it wasn’t great for taking photos).

We next starting walking towards the Piazza Signoria, checking out that familiar spot though at this time of the night they didn’t let us get up into the area with all the statues as it was apparently after hours.

So we just took some obligatory shots of the Piazza Signoria before continuing our walk towards the Republic Square, which had a carousel as well as a huge gate and some building with a lot of lights indicating Black Friday.

After that, we then continued walking further along a main throughfare leading towards the main Duomo but not before Julie had to indulge in a hot chocolate served up at this chocolateria called Venchi.

Eventually, we made it to the Duomo, which looked just a big, bright, and grand as we had recalled though it was quite difficult to take pictures of it from this close up.

Actually, as we were busy trying to gawk at the structures here, we started to hear someone singing an opera song live and in a bold voice.

At first, I thought it was some recording being played, but when we got to the front of the Duomo, there was someone in a sweater belting out songs from Andrea Bocelli and there were only a handful of passerbys stopping.

However, it didn’t take but a few minutes before this guy was being surrounded by a crowd of people quite impressed with what they were hearing from this busker.

Now why is someone this talented busking in the streets? Something was wrong with this picture.

By the time this guy got to his fifth or sixth song, he had to stop because it was too cold, but he left quite an impression on who was there at the time.

And he eventually reminded people that he could be found on Instagram @operainthestreet, which was a clever way to remember this performance and what this guy was doing.

When Julie looked up her internet, she eventually learned that this guy was actually a professional singing, and he ultimately believed that opera should be enjoyed by everyone and not just those with a lot of money.

So that was a pretty neat cause that he was going for, but anyways, we continued walking towards the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, and when we got there at around 8:40am, there was a sense of deja vu about this place.

Well, it turned out that not only was this place our meeting place for tomorrow’s day tour, but it also happened to be a piazza that we had driven past mistakenly earlier on when trying to return the rental car!

I guess we really did get an informal tour of driving in the narrow streets of Florence in their ZTL zones!

Once we had our fill of this pretty dead piazza, we then walked back the way we came and passed by the Duomo, the Republic Square, the Piazza Signoria, and ultimately the Ponte Vecchio and finally our hotel.

We got back by about to our room at 9:15pm after we briefly checked out the rooftop bar, which had a partial view towards the Piazza Signoria on one side and an obstructed view of the Arno River on the other side.

And with that, we thought we ended our night and ready to catch some shut eye before tomorrow (excepting the worst with the weather as it was predicted there’d be a lot of rain).

However, Julie got an email saying that our flight itinerary had changed, and upon looking at the itinerary further at around 11:30pm, they re-scheduled our flight for the following day AFTER our international flight!

Well, that wasn’t going to fly, and when we looked a bit further, we saw that there was an airline workers strike on the day we were to fly back from Venice to Fiumicino.

Just our luck that il sciopero strikes yet again!

We always have these kinds of dramas on our trips, and well, this was just the latest unforeseen circumstance that we had to deal with.

So we went ahead and immediately booked train tickets from Venice back to Rome, and then we’ll have to call tomorrow to try to get a refund back for our flight.

When all was said and done, it was around past 1am, and we were definitely going to be a bit more sleepless in Florence after being somewhat sleepless in both Rome and Bagno Vignoni (at least the first night anyway)…

Day 6 (November 21, 2023 – Florence, Italy): “Dry History”

It was about 5am when I awoke to the alarm, which meant that I really only got perhaps a little less than 4 hours of sleep given the drama from last night.

I managed to use some of this time to try to get caught up on yesterday’s rather drama filled events, especially when returning the rental car, but I ultimately didn’t get to finish when Julie had to take over to make a Skype call to ITA Airways.

Eventually at 6:45am, she was successful in getting a refund for our Venice to Fiumicino flights thanks to the airline workers strike that was taking place on the Friday of our scheduled flight.

And thus, with that bit of drama out of the way, we still had to book Venice train tickets, which we used the check-in time of our next accommodation as sort of a guide.

Eventually, by about 7:25am, we headed down for our included breakfast, which was the usual fare of baked goods, fruits, some scrambled eggs, bacon, yogurts, and some interesting cured meats.

Of course, they also had nutella in fancy glass containers so Tahia managed to get me one so I could spread it on a croissant that I got.

Eventually by around 8am, we were done with breakfast, then went downstairs so we could hail a cab, and then we were driven to the Piazza Santissima Annunziata, where we arrived at 8:15am after paying another 13 euros and change.

Again, our taxi costs have been adding up rapidly, but with our meeting time supposed to be in just another 5 minutes, this was a necessary call for our 8:30am tour.

When our guide showed up, who was named Eris, we ended up with a rather large group of some 17 people (I thought their tour group max was supposed to be no more than 12).

Regardless, we then walked with Eris down some of the streets towards the Academia dell’Arte, where there seemed to be quite a bit of scaffolding going on by the entrance.

It didn’t take much time before we were allowed in and through the airport-like security, but we then promptly went through a couple of rooms with some of the statues we have (or will) undoubtedly see in the Piazza Signoria.

The first one depicted some kind of “rape” scene with three statues.

After getting some explanation about the story behind this statue, we then checked out some of the surrounding paintings where Eris pointed out how some older paintings looked flat but after that, there was some 3-D perspective to it (due to shadows and angles).

Then, we walked into another chamber with a statue and some medieval paintings around it before going into the main chamber where we finally can see David up ahead.

The interesting thing about this visit was that we were actually allowed to take pictures of David on our own (whereas it wasn’t allowed on Julie’s and my first times 10 years ago).

So the guide gave us a few minutes on our own to check out David, which unsurprisingly was full of people gawking at it and even taking people shots in front of it.

Yet the memory of our prior experience with this place really made me hesitant to bust out the big camera to take shots, but the more I saw other people taking photos, the less restrictive I became with taking shots and this newfound freedom to capture the experience.

Tahia did mention that the iris of David was heart-shaped (apparently she had read about it earlier before this visit), and that wasn’t at all that obvious at first, but upon closer inspection, it was true.

Anyways, when we rejoined Eris, we then proceeded to learn that there were lots of unfinished statues in this same corridor that was apparently either a combination of running out of money or that it was intended that way so you the viewer can fill in the blanks.

We also learned that David was apparently the third person to work on this statue so it wasn’t as if it was all him though he apparently had a big role in its eventual form that you do see today.

As we got closer to David and even looked at some of the paintings in the same chamber, we saw that someone tried to vandalize this statue back in the early 90s, and apparently that messed up David’s foot.

It might have had something to do with the stance by the staff here to prohibit picture taking of the statue some 10 years ago when we were last here.

Or maybe social media brought increased attention and hence greater monetary income, which could also be a big reason for the change in policy here.

Anyways, we also got to see even more detail concerning the veins of the muscles of David as well as how this statue was kind of a symbol of freedom for the Florentine people at the time.

That was until the Medici family took over and basically the place went from a democracy to a dictatorship.

A few more tidbits that we didn’t know about was that David’s stance was for natural-looking balance though Michelangelo was running out of marble or something so David’s gaze to the left was actually more severe to ensure he could finish the face and its features.

Finally, Eris was another guide that also confirmed that Michelangelo was gay, and that it wasn’t a big deal at the time.

In fact, he even eventually married the model that David was based upon, which was amazingly open-minded since we thought homosexuality was taboo back then (considering the church tends to frown upon it these days).

Once we had our fill of David, we then checked out some more of the Medieval paintings near the exit where we could see how baby Jesus looked like it had an adult face, which seemed out of place but was apparently intentional at the time.

By about almost 10am, we were out of the Academia dell’Arte and then we proceeded to walk some pretty busy streets alongside the scaffolded Academia as we headed towards the Duomo.

Along the way, the guide pointed out a humble-looking gelato place who also echoed a similar sentiment about fake gelato places versus real ones (the tell-tale signs are the color and the shape of the gelato; i.e. run if you see bright colors or huge mounds).

Also, you’ll want to see gelato places that are artiginale, which means they’re artisan and hand-made.

Once at the square of the Duomo, we learned a bit about how Eris recommended that the interior of the Duomo in Siena was more interesting than the one here (not surprising since we had seen both in the past).

However, we also learned that the main designer of this Duomo managed to figure out things like allowing octogonal windows among the weight of all this heavy marble.

The fact that this place was still standing after so many centuries was a testament to the ingenuity in making this cathedral and that whatever techniques he used, it worked (though no one really knows how he did it since the artist got rid of the plans).

Next, we went in front of the gold door of the toy-box-looking building fronting the Duomo, where this place was actually getting some sun, which we totally weren’t expecting since the forecast called for pretty crummy weather all day long.

As we continued with the tour, we then walked towards the Republic Square, which was both modern and ancient (the latter because it was a meeting area when they started dividing out the city planning into grids).

Then, we continued towards the Piazza Signoria, which had nothing to do with Signora or Signore (ladies) and it was known as the “gentleman’s square” since it must have been an evolution of the word gentlemen in Latin before evolving into the Florentine dialect.

By the way, the modern Italian being spoken was actually derived from the Florentine dialect whereas it can be hard for Northern Italians to understand the dialects of Southern Italians given their independent histories.

There were some small local dive that Eris mentioned that we thought we should give that place a shot for lunch while waiting for our afternoon tour of the Ufizzi, which wouldn’t be until about 12:45pm.

Eventually, we walked over to the Uffizi and ultimately to an archway with a view of the Ponte Vecchio.

That was pretty much the last stop before Eris was done explaining the tour at around 11am.

We did get a recommendation from her about a good brasato place called 4 Leoni and we thought we should try to get a booking for that place.

There was also another place called Budellino though it didn’t seem like a likely place we could get a booking for since Julie thought that was more of a sandwich shop.

In the end, we decided that we should see if we could book a table at 4 Leoni, and so we went back to our hotel reception to see if it can be done.

The middle-aged guy there said he’d call on our behalf to see if we could book a spot, and he’d let us know.

So with that, we then headed back to the Piazza Signoria where we briefly checked out the city hall there, which I don’t think we had ever entered into before in the past.

There were some interesting paintings as well as statues in there (and there seemed to be something about lions there), including one in an atrium with a lion statue having the head of someone in its mouth.

Anyways, after our fill of the city hall, we then went back into the piazza for lunch at this tight joint called Vinaino Fiorenza, where we got a porchetta sandwich as well as some kind of truffle-tasting one with ham.

That latter one was a winner and we actually wanted more of it though we’d have to see if we could eat it by tomorrow before taking the train to Venice.

We also got some kind of nutella promo, which was also delicious, and both Tahia and I devoured that one.

And with that, we then checked out the statues facing the Piazza Signoria just as it was starting to rain a bit harder finally.

We got to get a closer look at the statues here, which Tahia seemed quite familiar with after having readong some Riordan books.

So it was interesting to see how she knew more about these statues than Julie than I did combined.

After killing some time among these statues, we then went over to another horse-riding statue (this one of a Medici), and ultimately met up with our guide who called herself Marta at 12:45pm.

After some brief introductions, she got right into talking about herself and about some the architecture that we were witnessing around us.

Her English was a little more difficult to follow, and I already noticed that she tended to say lots of words but never really got to the punch line of what she was saying.

It was probably going to feel like a long tour, but we were about to skip the line and go into the Uffizi so we were looking forward to that experience having never done it before.

Once all 12 of the tour participants were present at 1pm, we then walked over to the Uffizi and promptly went through the airport-like security before continuing through the offices (after all, Uffizi was an older way of saying “office”).

These were apparently Medici offices, and their place of doing their business as it was said that the Medicis rose to power being loan sharks (at least that’s what we got from Eris, but not so much from Marta).

We then proceeded to go up to the third floor of the Uffizi, where there was an impressive hallway full of statues and it was kind of reminiscent of the kind of hallways we saw earlier at St Peter’s Basilica as well as Versailles Palace years ago.

However, when we started getting into the Medieval paintings, that was when Marta started losing us as an audience as she’d go from one Mary and baby Jesus painting to another.

I don’t know how many more of these religious subjects we had to dwell on, but it was times like these that we probably should have done the touring on our own.

Indeed, the first hour (between 1 to sometime after 2pm) we just saw one religious painting after another, and it was pretty much torture at this point.

One couple actually did return the audio set early, and in hindsight, we probably should have done the same as art history is a pretty dry subject (despite Rick Steves giving this place a 3 out of 3 in his rating system).

After making a loop of the third floor, we then eventually went down to the first floor, which had more interesting works as there were famous paintings showing Venus in a reclined position.

I think that work was the last of what she wanted to point out to us, and on the way out, we saw other interesting works like the head of Medussa and even a women’s revenge type of paintings that looked rather graphic.

I don’t know why Marta didn’t spend more time with those paintings and spent too much time with the Mary and baby Jesus ones, but it kind of goes to show you how some guides have certain biases.

Anyways, after going downstairs and mazing our way out of the souvenir shop, we finally made it back out of the Uffizi at 3:20pm, where we then went a short run of gelatto at the place Eris recommended earlier on near the Academia dell’Arte.

Then, we walked over to the Venchi again for some hot chocolate and more gelati after Tahia didn’t like the flavors at the smaller place.

Right at that time, the rain came down harder, but also at the Venchi, they kept forgetting to make Julie’s hot chocolate so we were probably there longer than we should have been.

Finally at around 4:55pm, we made it back to our hotel, but not before crossing over the Ponte Vecchio to get some water at a small alimento shop.

The weather wasn’t kind at this time of evening even though there was twilight lighting and now was the best time to take photos.

When we spoke to the receptionist, we learned that he was trying to book a table for us at 4 Leoni, but he wasn’t able to reach them all day today.

So that didn’t bode well for us in terms of having a place for dinner tonight, and I probably had to resign myself to not having brasato on this trip even though I very much looked forward to having it.

Oh well, you can’t win these things sometimes.

The next hour was a bit of a blur as I tried to get caught up on doing some errands while Tahia was already fast asleep.

That said, we learned during this time that 4 Leoni was booked out even though they did have brasato on the menu today, and I guess that slammed the door shut on having that experience on this trip.

Who knew that having brasato was so hard? And that we must have gotten real lucky finding such a place on our last visit to Florence 10 years ago.

At 5:55pm, we were headed back out after Julie figured out that we should check out some place called Agricola Toscana, which was a small dive serving Tuscan comfort food.

We got there at 6:25pm even though we actually had 7pm reservations there thinking that their kitchen didn’t open until then, but when we got there, they still had some empty tables.

So we promptly went inside, got seated outside the cold temps, and the proceeded to have our slow food experience in Fiorenza one last time.

Apparently, they were known for Florentine steak but they had other stuff on the menu like the Peposo, which was marinated in wine for 48 hours (similar to how brasato is made).

And Julie managed to talk me out of having the Florentine steak, which was actually a huge dish as some people next to us looked like they were struggling to finish it.

Indeed, we ultimately had some kind of ragu for Tahia (though she wasn’t all that hungry and she was tired), we also shared a truffle carbonara pasta-like dish, and of course the pecoso along with a couple of red wines.

When all was said and done, we had ourselves a pretty satisfying meal, and we actually didn’t break the 100 euro price (it was like 89 euros), which was surprising since just about every meal we’ve had on this trip broke 100 euros.

That said, even around 89 euros was still over $100 USD I’m sure with the current exchange rates, and once again, I was going to feel it when we have to pay our bills next month.

By about 7:30pm, we left the Agricola Toscana, and then we made it back to our room at about 7:50pm, where the rest of the night was basically blur as we got cleaned up and then crashed.

I think Julie stayed up to start planning tours or something in Venice, and I recalled her saying something about a gondola ride, but whatever she wanted to do, I’m sure I just blindly agreed with it.

I thought she wanted to see Burano and Murano, but whatever. Maybe doing a tour in Venice might be a good idea to better appreciate Piazza San Marco and whatever else was going on there…

Day 7 (November 22, 2023 – Venice, Italy): “It’s Not Real”

It was 4:45am when I awoke without an alarm, but I did overhear some commotion going on between Julie and Tahia concerning Tahia’s itchy feet from mozzie bites she must have gotten in Florence (likely from wearing Crocs).

So with that, I took care of some errands concerning the usual blogging and photo processing.

I don’t think I managed to finish everything I wanted to get done by the time we went downstairs at 7:25am for breakfast.

Anyways, it wouldn’t be until about 8:15am when we were done with breakfast, and we decided to go straight for the Cathedral at the Duomo in Florence’s city center.

Well, when we got there at 8:30am, we learned that the free interior of that cathedral wasn’t open until about 10:15am, which wouldn’t suit us because we had an 11:20am train to catch to Venice.

So that was a bit of a bust, and we ultimately decided to head up to the Piazzale Michelangelo to at least get a whiff of the overlook of Florence (even if it wasn’t the magical lighting that we inadvertently saw when we drove into the Florence CBD a couple of days ago).

We knew that it would be a bit of a walk to get up there and back, and so we wasted no time walking all the way back to the Ponte Vecchio via the Uffizi, and then we crossed the bridge to the other side of the Arno River.

From there, we then followed the other side of the Arno River getting some interesting cross-river views towards the Uffizi Gallery as well as the Ponte Vecchio, but soon enough we then swung inland away from the river when we got towards the next bridge.

At that point, things got pretty quiet as Julie’s GoogleMaps directions had us go through some narrow alleyways that were seemingly random until we reached one of the city gates at what seemed to be left of Florence’s historical city wall.

That was interesting because we knew from our tour guide yesterday that the walls used to surround Florence, but now there were only a few remnants left, and this must have been one of those remnants.

When we got to the other side, we could see that this wall pretty much followed the contours of the hillside we were on, it almost seemed to take on a Great Wall of China characteristic in that regard.

Nevertheless, we continued climbing up sloping streets before we were about to follow some signs that took us up to an interesting sloping cobblestone walkway, but it was closed and the narrow road to its right seemed to veer us away from the desired square.

So we took a different road closer to the river but still way above it, and we saw some interesting tower before going up more ramps, crossing a snaking road that we had driven on a couple of days ago, and then finally making it up to the Piazzale Michelangelo at 9:20am.

Up here, it was not so busy since it was mostly gray skies and it was somewhat cold, but I could also see that this square used to be mostly a parking lot but now there was very limited parking spaces behind a fence.

So even if we missed a chance at getting the sunset view a couple of days ago, it would have been a real challenge to park the car at that time.

Anyways, we took our obligatory people shots at one corner of the overlook though there were umbrellas sticking out from the bottom kind of messing up the panorama from up here.

We opted not to go to the lower lookout, and thus when we had our fill of this lookout, we then looked to go to the taxi stand, but it seemed like they didn’t come around often at this time of the morning.

In fact, we maybe tried to wait 5 minutes when we didn’t see one taxi, and so we ultimately decided to just walk back to the hotel to go to the toilet one last time as well as to pack up our stuff and get going.

So at around 9:35am, we promptly walked down from the Piazzale Michelangelo, and then we proceeded to go straight down to the Arno River, which seemed to be a more direct way.

We eventually got down to the old looking tower before following a shared pedestrian and bike sidewalk as we headed straight for the road bridge further upstream from the Ponte Vecchio.

Once we got over that bridge (and noting some art piece of a simple figure about to walk over the edge of the bridge onto the Arno River), we then followed the remainder of the road to the Uffizi Gallery and ultimately the Hotel degli Orafi.

Actually, Julie and Tahia split up because Julie had to do her business and so I took Julie’s credit card so I could get to the Vinaino Fiorenza for one last go at a takeaway of their delicious truffle with ham and cheese sandwich (called Fiorenza, I believe).

So I promptly walked back to the Piazza Signoria, and then got to the Vinaino Fiorenza joint, but its gate was only partway open, meaning they were about to open.

I was there at around 9:55am so I took a little more time to take some pictures around the Piazza Signoria (which we were quite familiar with at this point as we must have seen it at least a half-dozen times or more in the past day and a half).

I guess they must have been on Italian time because it didn’t open until about 10:05am, and then I could finally make my order.

So with that out of the way, I got the pair of Fiorenza sandwiches, and then returned to the room by 10:15am so I could do my business while Julie and Tahia were wrapping up on the luggages and doing one more round in the room.

Ultimately, after checking out of the hotel, we then got a taxi at 10:35am, and we proceeded to be driven back to the Stazione Santa Maria Novella.

Having to deal with some congestion in the city, especially around the train station, we ultimately got there at around 11:05am plus around 22 euros poorer.

I did notice that when you have luggages, there seems to be a higher tariff (though the fixed rate spots didn’t seem to have this).

Ultimately, as we waited to learn which platform (binario) our train was on, we all ate our sandwiches, and then proceeded to get onto binario 9 pretty much when we finished our sandwiches and threw our trash away.

Shortly thereafter, we got onto the pretty crowded train as it seemed like lots of people were going to Venice at this time (I thought this was supposed to be the off-season in Italy!?!), and we ultimately found a spot to put our large luggage in between seats.

After all, the large luggage compartments were all full by the time we were seated.

Sure enough, the train took off right on time at 11:20am, and then we pretty much got settled for the next couple of hours.

I managed to get some last minute photo processing chores done on the train itself so I ultimately got caught up with that.

At 12pm, the train arrived in Bologna Station, but I noticed that the train went through so many tunnels at the time that Gaia GPS really didn’t record anything much to this point.

But the rest of the train ride was pretty much a blur as I must have gotten some food coma after finishing off with the sandwiches earlier on.

By about 1:35pm, we arrived as scheduled at the Venezia Santa Lucia Station, where lots of people with their luggages were getting off.

As we walked through the mall section of the train station (I didn’t remember seeing that before), we then got to the familiar steps looking out to some domes and the grand canal.

Tahia must have doubted that what Julie and I told her about Venice was true because she didn’t believe that there was such a thing as water taxis.

But one look out at the canals and Tahia had this priceless reaction like “No way!”.

As we were about to go down the steps, and I was about to take some pictures of the station and the Grand Canal, a porter came up to us and immediately started taking our luggages without asking.

This seemed all wrong to begin with, but because it was going to a water taxi, which we did need, Julie didn’t resist.

I knew were going to get scammed but I didn’t know by how much.

By the time we were led to the water taxi and we were about to get on, the porter finally asked for 10 euros, and that right there was the scam.

We easily could have lugged the luggages ourselves to the water taxis on our own from the train station to the water taxi, and even the porter had a little smile on him when we got the 10 euros from Julie (basically like $12 USD).

Nevertheless, we got into the taxi and proceeded to go to the Rialto Bridge, which was where our accommodation was.

During the nice boat ride with the nice weather as well (contrasting wildly with the stormy weather I had remembered when Julie and I last went to Venice 10 years ago), we were taking pictures from the back of the boat.

Tahia joined me and kept repeating “This is not real!” as clearly her mind had been blown about a city unlike any other in the world.

Often imitated, never duplicated.

And this puts the photos her friends shared about the Venetian in Las Vegas in its place.

By about 2:05pm, we arrived at the boat stop for Rialto, and then we promptly got our luggages, paid the hefty 50 euros for that taxi, and then promptly went right into the Hotel Rialto, where we splurged for both of our nights in Venezia.

During the checkin, we learned what our options were for the water shuttles to get to Burano though the hotel did have a tour to Murano as well.

I think the receptionist was trying to push the Murano option, but in the back of our minds, we knew we had to prioritize Burano, especially since we were running out of daylight.

So by about 2:20pm, we got settled into our room, which was at the very top of the hotel, we were blown away by both the size of this place as well as the views that we were getting of the Grand Canal and the Rialto Bridge.

As much as we wanted to bask in this room and just amble about, we knew that daylight was running out and we had to get all the way to Fondamente Nove docks right away to get to Burano.

So by 2:35pm, we promptly headed out and then we walked our way to the docks, where we checked out some narrow alleyways, tight canals with gondolas, and small squares that I didn’t recall seeing on our first visit.

Since we had GoogleMaps this time around, we didn’t get lost on our way to the Fondamente Nove docks, and we ultimately got there by about 3pm.

We waited for our boat (or public ferry called vaporetto) after paying about 19 euros per person for the round-trip fare (man these costs were really adding up).

It turned out that we got onto a 3:10pm boat and there weren’t that many people on board to start out with.

Deep in the distance, we could see some lightly snow-capped mountains to the north, which I believed were indeed the Dolomites as there seemed to be some granite protrusions.

Anyways, the boat ride was pleasant though there seemed to be more people getting on when the boat docked at Murano.

Still, the boat ride continued as it then went to a stop at Mazzorvo and then it surprisingly went to Burano instead of Torcello (I guess it was going there after Burano instead of before as the signs had indicated earlier).