At 6:30 a.m. I arose and opened the window to our hotel room. The sun was rising, the night's lights were still glowing, and Venice was just awakening. The city wore a gentle peach colored sheen. Vaporetti carried a few early risers; taxi boats were jostling into place for the morning rush. What a view! Hard to believe that within a few hours we would be saying goodbye to this city of water we have so thoroughly enjoyed.
Our Eurostar train to Rome was the "bullet", making stops in Bologna and Florence and then rushing onto Rome. We were transported from the Adriatic in the north, south to almost on the Mediterranean in under four hours. I must say it again - our train was scheduled to depart at 9:27 a.m. Which it did right on the second! Love you Trenitalia.
My book was out ready to read, but I could not take my eyes off the passing countryside. From Venice to Bologna, the landscape looks almost like our prairies- flat as a pancake. With the exception of small towns along the way, every inch of land is being cultivated with a crop. When you are a small country with a large population, you do not waste your arable land.
As we blew through Bologna, Jim looked up from his newspaper as said straight-faced, "look and see if Bologna's suburbs are named Salami". Such are the trials of traveling with Jim!?!?
Once past Bologna, I waited with great anticipation for glimpses of the Tuscan countryside. We were now in Tuscany all right. Problem? Tuscany is hill country. The track ran through a series of extremely long tunnels carved though the hills. It was like being on the Toronto subway, only without the stops! And then, south of Florence, there they were - cypress trees, little hill towns, tidy row upon tidy row of grapevines, olive groves..... Goodbye to
Tuscany, too!
And then into Rome we roared. The drive to our hotel was like watching a river of cars move without purpose or destination. Traffic in Rome takes on a life of it's own. Sort of like trees in a raging river during a flood. How anyone in this city drives and survives is a total mystery to me. It's a miracle, I guess! We have arrived at our hotel (in one piece, I might add), wandered the streets around St.Peter's Basillica, treated ourselves to a gelato (yum) and are now sitting on the roof garden journelling and blogging. We have four glorious days in Rome to see some of what we did not get to during our previous visit, although I think that the Coliseum is once again calling to Jim.
Ciao!
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