Travel with Art

final days: Bologna, Tuscany, and out... We left Assisi in the rain which continued for pretty much the entire drive. First we headed into the town of Ravenna to view the main Basilica and what is said to be the best mosaics in Italy. The church was nice but dark and the mosaics underwhelming. Still it was an OK break and not much out of our way. We arrived in Bologna at 1:00pm but missed the hotel entrance so I parked, found the needed details and made the loop to get in. Only after I was in the room I found info on the city centre being a no go area for private cars with auto sensors to capture license plate details and automatic fines issued... It appears our hotel is just outside that zone. All good but our little stop and a traffic block by an ambulance meant I may have strayed into the red zone... Time will tell. And the rain still came. We sat in the room for awhile, reading and watching tv, then I headed out to get my bearings during a let up in the rain. But I was back jus

Pompei and Assisi... After a nice stay in Sorrento time came to head out. 15km to Pompei but the trip took an hour. Love (hate) tight, narrow, twisty Italian roads. But we get there and Mom decides to take in the exterior view... I entered and covered part of the huge excavated and partially reconstructed area. The town sits in the shadow of the part of Mount Vesuvius that remains after it blew its top in 76AD. It is quite amazing to walk the streets of cobble and see marble facilities, fresco painting, and some rooms pretty much intact after being dug out from the ash. There are 10s and maybe hundreds of city blocks but I only walked a small portion. Just near my exit point there was a line of storage bays that were behind barriers but still allowed viewing of excavated urns, crockery, but also mummified remains of people and animals. The most striking were a young boy and a dog. Then with the GPS set to allow tolls we headed on to Assisi. It was a great choice as €20 cut 3hours f

Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast: 3 days First thing Monday morning I headed over to Hertz to collect the rental car. Took almost an hour before I was able to return to the hotel and load Mom and the luggage for the trip south. Garmin GPS gave pretty good directions and we were out of Rome without difficulty. Then, avoiding toll roads, we were out into the countryside. But there it got to be a bit confusing. Speed limits were posted in seemingly random order, with one minute it's 90 then 50 then 90 then 60, etc all within minutes of each other (and Garmin pretty much said it was 90). I tried as best I could to follow the posted limits but that meant that local Italians were passing me all the time.... And they passed even when there was no lane to do so, and motorbikes passed from either the left or the right depending on their mood! Our route took us through some lovely country and up into the mountains. But Garmin also took us off direct paths and onto farm trails for no apparent

The start of our Italian vacation: 3 days in Rome Our flight was an early morning arrival, 6:30am, and combined with wheelchair service we were through immigration, baggage collection and customs in no time at all. We arrived downtown Rome at 8:00 but that was way too early to check in. So I left Mom in the comfy lounge and headed out to locate the pick up point for our Rome OMNI cards which grant us head of the queue entrances to The Vatican, Sistine Chapel, St Peter's Basilica, the Colloseum and most other sights. Also free use of the ChristianaRoma hop on hop off tour bus and all Rome public transit. It is a fantastic service. Finally we were set to head out and get our bearings. We found the near by stop for the hop on bus. I headed up to the open air section while Mom stayed in the closed lower area. Beautiful sunshine, blue skies, and just warm temperature. We used this first tour to remain on the bus for its full circuits of stops to get the overall layout of Rome's