The Lakes District

We travelled by train from Austria back into Italy today. We are staying at a place on Lake Garda (the biggest lake in Italy) called Desenzano del Garda. It is in Northern Italy. We walked along the esplanade and into town where they had markets. It seemed everyone in town was out and about having dinner or ice-cream. We were very healthy, and bought fruit from the markets, for dessert back at the motel. I'd really like an ice-cream now though :) 

The Austrians LOVE Easter. They have bunnies everywhere...even made of bread. Very cute.

 There is no surf on the lake. 

Downtown Desenzano.

Skiing in Innsbruck

I had my first skiing lesson today. Oh dear! I am NOT very good.....so, I think it will be my last lesson too!! The poor ski instructor kept on telling me to do something and the next time I would forget what he said to do. We spent all day on the mountain. (Alexis, our ski instructor, called it - upstairs) 
Amy and John were much better at skiing than I thought they would be. We are all very tired now though. They are going skiing on a glacier tomorrow. I don't think I will go.

               Here I am trying to ski. Argh!!! I only fell over a few times. TRUE!!

                                  Amy, John and Alexis upstairs on the mountain.

      Here I am after skiing. Even though it was cold it was hot and sweaty work. 

Austria - Innsbruck

We travelled (3 different trains) from Florence to Innsbruck on Monday.  The ride was fairly spectacular.  The closer we got to Innsbruck the more snow there was. I have never seen snow before so I was pretty excited.
We did a bus trip around the town today. There are not that many things to see and do but we walked around the castle gardens and wandered around town.
We also got fitted out with our snow gear because we are going skiing for the next three days. John and Amy have been skiing in New Zealand a few times before so they can ski (sort of). We have an instructor for tomorrow. I hope I can at least ski a little bit by the end of the day.

 This is the scene from the train as we were travelling to Innsbruck.

This is the view from our bedroom window. It is pretty spectacular. The mountains are very high and surround Innsbruck.

Here is John having lunch today. The restaurant was out in the open. There were blankets on the seats and Amy and I had to snuggle under ours because it was a bit chilly. Look at the mountain in the background.

Here's Amy in the grounds of the palace. Check out the snow on the ground. Apparently they had their best snowfall of the season on the week-end.

Siena and San Gimignano

We went on a bus tour today. We visited two towns in the Tuscan countryside. Tuscany is bit like like a state.
The first town was Siena. We went on a two hour walking tour. We heard all about the different areas of Siena. The town is broken into many sections. Each section is given a name like caterpillar, rhino, goose, hedgehog, dragon, eagle and heaps more. Amy wanted to be a caterpillar. John a goose and I wanted to be a rhino. Two times a year there is a big horse race around the town square and each section has a horse in the race. It is a big honour if your section's horse wins the race.
We visited the walled town of San Gimignano. There is a big brick wall all around the outside of the town. We had a gelato from the shop that has the best ice-cream in the world. In 2014 they won prizes for the world's best chocolate ice-cream. It was yummy. We walked around and looked at all the very old buildings. In the museum they had a model of the city from the 1300s. Each family, to show how wealthy they were, built a tower. The taller the tower the richer the family. There used to be 72 towers (in 1300) but now there are only 14 remaining.
We are going to Innsbruck in Austria (a different country) tomorrow. John and Amy want to go skiing. They have had a lot of snow there lately.

Here are two of the symbols for the different sections....the rhino and the caterpillar. They are all over the town.

This is the big square where they have the horse race. 

A Rainy Sunday in Florence

It was a rainy day today. We visited the Uffizi. This is an art gallery with many very famous paintings. Some of the famous artists are Michelangelo, Raphael and Botticelli. Some of the paintings have been hanging in the gallery since the 17th century...that's the 1600s. 

We went shopping in the afternoon. Florence is famous for it's leather goods and I bought a new leather handbag. By the end of the day there was blue sky but it was rather chilly when we were walking back to our room. We hope to go on a bus tour tomorrow to Siena and San Gimignano.

This is Amy and I at the top of the Uffizi. You can't take pictures inside though I did see a few people taking pictures with their phones. They would have been in BIG trouble if they were caught.

 This is a church called the Basilica di Santa Croce. We bought a watercolour painting of it today.

 

John and Amy wandering the streets of Florence. John has his Cowboys shirt on.

Saturday in Florence

Today we jumped aboard a bus for a tour of Florence. We hopped off at Piazzale Michelangelo first of all. There were marvellous views of the city and river.

Our next stop was Palazzo Pitti. (a very grand palace) with very beautiful gardens. It is now a museum. There are wonderful paintings on the walls and even the ceilings. I really liked the room full of jewellery. Some of the jewellery was modern but most of it was very old. We were not allowed to take photographs inside the rooms. 

We had lunch - pasta with gelato for dessert (again!). Then it was off to another museum. This one was all about famous scientists. John LOVED it. He is a science teacher, after all. 

This is the view from Piazzale Michelangelo. It was a bit cooler and wet today. Once we got inside though we had to take off our coats because it was too hot!

Here we are in the gardens of the palace. Very grand and very enormous. I am glad I don't have to do the mowing or trim the hedges.

These globes are in the Galileo Museum. (the one about the famous scientists) Some of them are very old. They are so old they don't have Australia on them because Australia had not been discovered by white man yet. 



This is a statue of Galileo. He is famous for discovering the moons of Jupiter, discovering dark patches on the sun (sunspots) and developing a way to measure time. He is one of John's favourite scientists. He lived from (about) 1550 to 1630. (a very long time ago)

 

In Firenze (Florence)

John has been at his Teachers' Conference for the last two days so Amy and I have been wandering the streets of Firenze - that's Italian for Florence. It is a beautiful city. There are many things to see and do. One of my favourites is eating gelato (yummy ice-cream).
We went shopping yesterday. Amy loves shopping!!!! Today we visited Ponte Vecchio - which is the most famous bridge over the Arno River. There were lots of tourists and lots of jewellery shops. All the jewellery was a bit expensive but we did buy some cool things from the Pinocchio Store.
Have you noticed we are getting very good at taking "selfies"?

                                                             This is our "selfie" for today.

                                                      This is Amy on the way to the bridge.

                                             This is the Ponte Vecchio across the Arno River.

There are lots of very interesting buildings in Florence. Look at the bikes on the outside of this modern apartment block. The second photo is of some of the older buildings along the river.

Day Three in Italy

We did some more sight-seeing today. We got our walking shoes on and walked to the Pantheon. It is a very old church and very spectacular. It was much more beautiful than I thought it would be.
We are now in Florence. We caught the fast train again. More snow-capped mountains in the distance
 and lots of beautiful countryside. When we got settled into our hotel room John decided he had to find where his conference is tomorrow. We got lost BIG TIME and ended up doing so much walking. Florence is not as big or as busy as Rome and Amy and I plan on wandering around the shops and markets tomorrow.

Our day in Pompeii

We caught the train to Naples and then Pompeii today. The train went really fast - up to 280 km an hour. There were snow-capped mountains in the distance as we went by. That was pretty cool!
While we were at Pompeii we walked around the ruins. Mt Vesuvius (a volcano) erupted and covered the city with ash and lava. It was not discovered for nearly one thousand years. It was interesting seeing all the sights. I could not believe how beautiful everything must have looked way back then. You can still see some of the paintings on the walls.
We are leaving Rome tomorrow and going by train up to Florence. John has to go to his conference for two days so Amy and I will go exploring by ourselves. That could prove interesting cos we are both very good at getting lost.

Our first day in Italy

 Hello everyone. It took a very long time to get to Italy (over 24 hours). We flew to Singapore, then Dubai and then finally Italy. We have spent our first day in Rome, the capital of Italy. We have seen lots of the important sites. The Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, Saint Peter's Square and the Roman Forum.We have not had any pizza yet but we all had yummy pasta for dinner. We are going to Pompeii tomorrow so I will post some pictures from there.

Two days to go

Getting excited for our adventure to Italy. I will use this blog to keep you informed about our travels.