Kelly Trips and Tours

Today is our last day in Italy and we will be going home tomorrow.  We did not have anything planned to do today, so yesterday we consulted the internet for some ideas.  We didn't want to do anything outside since it was supposed to be around 98 degrees by 5pm - and it was.  Bill was looking at some ideas and came up with the idea of taking a pasta cooking class, which included wine and lunch.  Karen of course was all for it. This morning after going across the street for breakfast (chocolate croissants), we started out walking across the Ponte Vecchio Bridge towards the Duomo to the cooking class (approx. 15-min. walk).   Our hotel door is on the corner where you see B&B.  The cross walk leads onto the Ponte Vecchio Bridge and at 9:30am there are very few crowds, whereas the afternoon is wall to wall people. When we got to the cooking class door, we were told that we had the wrong address and that our class was back towards our hotel about a block...

We slept well last night but in spite of that we decided to change rooms today because of our sink stopper was stuck down and clogging the drain.  We now have a nicer, larger, and quieter room in which we hope the sink stopper will work as needed.  This hotel is the only one that we did not schedule a hotel breakfast so we were on our own for breakfast.  We looked up a bakery near us and when we went outside, Bill was using his phone to try and get directions to one and all he had to do was look up and there were two across the street from the hotel.  Now we know where to go tomorrow because the pastries were very good. We had a tour of the Duomo scheduled for 11 o'clock so we started off  walking in that direction.  It was getting warm but a breeze provided some natural air conditioning.   On our way to the Duomo. The Florence Duomo Cathedral opened on March 25, 1436 and is one of the largest churches in the world. It stands nearly 302 ft. high a...

This is our last train travel day and it is a beautiful day with light sea breezes.  We had a taxi pick us up at the hotel and drive us to the train station - about 1/2 mile.  Last time we were here we walked with our roller bags but now that we are older, the taxi was much easier.  We got their earlier than needed but we were able to relax on a cool morning. Our train took us to Pisa where we had to change trains for our second leg to take us to Florence.  Once again there were a lot of people traveling and when it was time for us to board the train, we were in a crowd.  As soon as Bill got on the train he told Karen that he had been pick pocketed and he didn't know where his wallet was.  Karen was concerned but she looked to her left and saw a college age girl and she was holding up his wallet.  We were very glad to get the wallet back and thanked her very much.  After we got to our seats we started wondering if that girl was the actual pickpock...

It's not that it's that hot (85 degrees), but it's very humid for us SOCAL travelers.  But, we had less humidity today and a wonderful breeze.  Today it was time to see 2-more Cinque Terra towns - Riomaggiore and Manarola.  First we purchased the local one-day train ticket so we could travel to any town, anytime. Ticket in hand off we went. Lots of people catching the train. We decided to go to the end of the line and work our way back so be disembarked at Riomaggiiore, a picturesque fisherman's village.  We had a chance to stroll around but much of the strolling was uphill as it is a very steep town up the mountain. Up and up more. At about noon we wanted to have some pizza but could not find a place with a view that served pizza.  It is surprising that a lot of restaurants in Italy do not serve pizza.  Going down towards the harbor, no pizza places except take away.   Lots of boats, but no pizza nearby. So, we decided to take our chances with th...