Greetings from Venice

Our hotel in Venice has the slowest wifi, but it is also open access. This is good since we didn't get to meet our landlord yesterday. The hotel is over a bar/restaurant and the workers let us in. I assume the owner will show up at some time to collect rent. We got very turned around trying to find this place yesterday, but it actually worked out well because we couldn't get in until someone came to open up the restaurant around six-thirty.

So much of doing a trip like this is the logistics. You book a place online then you have to somehow find it when you get to the locale. Streets in Italy are not based on a grid. Signs are never where you would expect them, and often small streets are not on the map. I didn't want to pay data roaming charges, so we did it the old-fashioned way of looking at maps. Our hotel in Florence gave precise directions from train station. Our B&B here in Venice never even responded to the email DMA sent. From a standpoint of dealing with these logistics, I can understand why people like tour groups. They also work out all the transport details. Though I will say that the train system in Italy is very easy to use and figure out.

We just have two full days left, then the long trek home.

Last Full Day in Florence

We had planned on either going to Bologna today or going around Florence some more, and ended up doing the latter. We went to Michaelangelo's family home then wandered over the river, then back to visit Santa Croce. Now resting after a large expensive gelato. Tomorrow we go to Venice.

In Florence

Wish I could figure out how to upload photos from my iPhone to here.

Most of my pics are on my real camera that I bought before I left. So any real writeup with photos will have to happen later.

Food is superb here. We have not had a bad meal in Italy so far. And while most people seem to speak some English, I am happy I studied Italian!

Greetings From Rome

Typing on my iPhones tiny keyboard to say hello from Rome. There are no nearby Internet cafes so I am roughing it!

Mon Voyage

It's a good thing I'm not in school anymore.  I feel like I'm so good at procrastinating these days and back when I was in school, we didn't have the whole internet for web surfing.  I am sure there are people who spend weeks packing and getting ready, but I'm just not that type of person.  I had today as a downtime day to get stuff done, and I did get a lot of stuff done, but I'm still not 100% packed.  I'll have to pack the rest of the toiletries in the morning.  At least I'm going to be in LA for a few days so if there's anything really important, I can get it done there before I'm in Italy.

Autumn Upon Us

I just realized that it's been a week and a half since I wrote here.  I am hoping a cat picture will distract from the fact that I've been blog-neglectful.

It's the weirdest thing but it seems like it became fall almost overnight.  Certainly over the last weekend.  And this wasn't some dastardly daylight savings time issue either.  It went from sunny on Sunday to raining on Monday.  And it's a bit cold as well.  I haven't had to turn the heat on yet, but I am figuring that it's only a matter of time.  And my cats went from hanging out in other rooms to wanting to be in the same room as me and possibly wanting to be on top of me (which is nice, and probably keeping me from being too cold).

A week from today, I am going to be on a plane to Italy.  I feel like I have a billion things to do, but I actually have a fairly modest list here.  It helps that I have only two more work days, then three weeks off.  Seriously is that not the best thing ever?  I guess other than six weeks off.  But I think if I had six weeks off, I would forget what exactly it is that I do at work anyway.  Three weeks is probably optimum.  We are actually going to be in Italy for only two weeks, but this gives me time on the beginning and end of the trip to sort of adjust to being in vacation mode, then adjust to being back in the right time zone.

I feel like I've been making a lot of progress, mentally.  I had a shitty session with my therapist two weeks ago, and I never really got around to writing about it, but I spent a lot of time processing it.  I realize that so often, especially with authority figures, I take what they say as if it is gospel, and it isn't really.  I am an adult, and I can answer these questions about how to be, how to live my life, on my own.  I think even at thirty-eight, sometimes that's hard to remember that.  Even though I haven't lived in the same city as my parents for over twenty years, I still hear their voices sometimes telling me what to do.  Or that I'm doing everything the wrong way.  I've done so much physically to remove myself from that sort of pressure, yet I sometimes feel like I carry it with me.  But I'm working on unpacking that.