Everyone is going their own way now – John D left last night already – had to catch the 10:00 train to Vienna, Dora left bright and early to catch the 7:30 shuttle to the airport. Next were Peter and Rita and Bill and Rita and Andy to catch a 10:30 flight to Amsterdam. John and Irene went over to the train station at 6:30 to book their train trip back to Holland only to find out that the ticket agents were on strike…..what to do now? Their bikes are with us now and we will take them back to Holland for them – this will make their travel so much easier in case they fly now. Karen, John K and Adrian are the only ones left behind when we leave at 9:30 – they fly out at 3:00.
We hit the road, thankful to have Adrian’s “TomTom” with us – this way we don’t have to consult maps at all. Milan is known as the fashion capital of the world – we did see this in how the people were dressed - both ends of the spectrum in regards to the rich and the poor. We were not in the most desirable area of the city in other respects – a little rough to say the least – our windows have to stay open in our rooms because of the heat and all night long there is noise. One of our group had his wallet lifted right out of a front pocket. Good thing it was the last day but still not nice. Getting out of Milan was a bit of a chore but once we got on the freeway, it was clear sailing. We left the freeway after a while so that we could go through the Tuscany region of Italy. Words or pictures will never describe the scenery that we saw. One thing was too bad, the sunflowers were all bloomed out….so sad for me as I was really hoping to see them in bloom yet. Scenes from “Under the Tuscan Sun” show sunflowers so that is why I wanted to see them. I have other sunflower shots so maybe I can transpose them over……olive groves and vineyards are in abundance.
We have picked up a book on Italy and it tells us the places to see in Tuscany so we have planned our route accordingly. We stopped for lunch in a quaint old town…….tourist season is over here so it does become difficult at times to find places to eat. The need for some Italian ice cream in the afternoon led us to places where we weren’t sure we should be. We saw 3 empty tour buses at one spot so we thought there should be something to see in this other town so we kept on driving – well we were the only vehicle on this one particular street filled with pedestrians…..we just had to keep on going even though “Betsy” told us to turn around as soon as possible. Nobody gave us dirty looks – we were all tourists……parking places are very difficult to find in these small towns so you just take your chances – we did finally find some real Italian ice cream and it was worth it.
The plan was to find a place to sleep along the coast of the Mediterranean and we did – mind you we were the only guests in this hotel – and also at supper. We decided to eat there as well and had the local fish for supper. There was a little difficulty in making ourselves understood about what kind of fish we wanted or how it was prepared so each of us got a plate of fish – head and tail still attached. I soon get rid of the head – don’t like eyes looking at me while I eat. It was delicious – served with grilled vegetables and a basket of bread. Every restaurant in Italy has a bottle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar on it and this is how they eat the bread, dipped in this mixture.
All the windows and doors of our room were left open so we could hear the waves hitting the shore – we slept well and woke up to the sound of the crashing waves. It’s a bit overcast this morning……don’t know what the weather will do today but we had a good day yesterday.
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