Roman Holiday

I'll have to revisit these Italian posts and add a little more detail.... In any case, I'll get the pictures posted. 3 days in Rome

Possum Junction at the you-know-what

Tuscany

Well friends, I've fallen behind in my posts since my Italian vacation. Tuscany is a short, sweet story... Beautiful landscapes, stunning like a painting. If you find yourself in this part of the world, I would highly recommend stops in Siena and Lucca (Puccini's birthplace). I can also highly recommend our guesthouse in Florence, I Parigi - gorgeous! We enjoyed a dinner of wild boar in the alabaster-mining town of Volterra, only to find ourselves seated by some ex-IBMers from the Kingston plant (of course)! We struck up a conversation over Ted Kennedy's brain tumor, and found we had much more in common...... It's hard to escape when you work for a company with 350,000 employees. Click here for pictures of Tuscany

David (an impressive 17 ft tall)

Cinque Terre

Second stop on our Italian tour was the Cinque Terre. I have been wanting to do this 9km hike for a while. We stayed in a town just north of the Cinque Terre called Moneglia - - highly recommended. It was small and quiet, still on the beach and on the train line. A good place for authentic Ligurian cuisine, uncrowded streets, and afternoon naps. Our second day in the area, we hiked the "5 lands" from South to North, starting in Riomaggiore and finishing in Monterosso al Mare. Fortunately for us, this was our only day of the entire week where it was mostly sunny. Between Vernazza and Monterosso, our luck finally ran out and we got caught in a downpour....fortunately, we were on the very last leg of the hike. Corniglia was my favorite - we stopped for a light lunch of roasted vegetables, italian cheese and honey. Perfect! Click here for more photos of the Cinque Terre

On the Cinque Terre trail; the village of Manarola in the background