Late last year, we had been invited to spend a week or so with a good friend and his family who was planning to rent a villa in Tuscany, Italy in the summer of 2006. For various reasons that fell through but we had set in motion the prospect of a European holiday with Tuscany being the centre piece of the trip.
Shorty had never been to Europe and my trips to Europe had been usually business-focussed or for short specific purposes. Neither had done the ‘tourist circuit’ that these days seems to completed before you are 25 and with a backpack. When Tuscany fell through we nearly shelved the whole idea but tickets were tentatively booked and Shorty had already purchased a small library of the ‘what to do, see, eat variety’ so we rethought the trip and went.
We saw a lot and I mean a lot, but we never felt we were rushed. The weather was absolutely, unbelievably glorious. Hot and sunny without clouds or rain day after day. We returned with a tan more likely to have been obtained from a trip to Hawaii than London/Paris/Northern Italy. Half our clothes never left our suitcase as t-shirts and shorts/slacks were the only comfortable clothing.
A busy few weeks of almost daily highlights that are hard to separate any specifically above the rest but here are some in rough chronological order not importance: – Watching jubilant Italians taking over Trafalgar Square in London after Italy won the Football (Soccer) World Cup – A visit to Mont St Michel – Le Louvre (Egyptian rooms) – Watching the Bastille Day Parade on the Champs d’Elysees – Versailles – Trout in a small Parisian sidewalk cafe – A beach in Nice to chill out – A Russian Orthodox Church in Nice – Milan Duomo – Venice Piazza San Marco in the evenings with live music – A mozzarella restaurant in Rome – Rome Palatine
There weren’t many downsides: – Venice (see it once, never go back) – beggars in Italy and a terrible 1 star Michelin resturant with a Japanese chef that combined the worst of 2 cultures.
And if you ever go to Europe, there is one place you cannot miss – Duomo in Milan. Absolutely, totally, breathtaking. After that adjectives and superlatives fail….
