Italia!

You may have noticed that I've been off line for a while.  It is now about 4:00 in the a.m. here and I am coping with a little jet lag.  We have just returned from a two week trip to Italy, one week in Rome and one week in Tuscany.  A dream trip that we have been planning for well over a year.

We walked all the little side streets of Rome, hiked quit a few very hilly towns, and floated through Florence not believing what we were seeing or that we were there.
I saw the Sistine Chapel!  After a little ugly crying just to be there, I was completly awestruck.

Here are just a few of the well over a thousand pictures I took throught out the trip.

Our apartment in Rome was in Vatican City.  So, we walked up to the Vaticani our first night in town.
Here are Larry and I with St. Peter's in the background.  Later in the week we had a private tour of the Vatican.
It is the largest cathedral in the world with St. Patrick's in NYC fitting inside only a small section of it.
I expected to see paintings but was surprised at the collections of ancient
Etruscan, Greek and Roman sculpture and mosaics.

"The School of Athens" by Raphael, inside the Pope's apartment.

Michelangelo's "Pieta"

Crossing the Tiber River.

Inside the Colosseum.  We spent days touring Roman antiquity.
In addition to the Colosseum,  the Pantheon, and hiked all around the
Forum.

Countless beautiful shops, side streets and entertainers.

  

After a week in Rome, we moved onto our villa in Tuscany.
This is our backyard with miles of rolling hills behind.
Everyday we toured a different village in this region, did some wine and olive oil tasting and found the most elegant little restaurants amid former horse stables and farms.

Here we are with my brother and sister-in-law, Dick and Terri at an overlook point above Florence.

Just an amazing trip and I count myself so lucky to have actually been there.  Rome was just dazzling in the amount of antiquity we experienced.  Tuscany, as beautiful as you can imagine.  I have to say my favorite city overall was Florence.  So much art and art history.  We saw everything we could including the house Michelangelo grew up in, the church where he is buried (just around the corner from his childhood home) , of course, museums and a gifted tour guide who showed us a fabulous time through the city.

I have so much beautiful research that I will spend the summer working on an Italian series of paintings.
But not of the tourist sites, as breathtaking as they are, but the little things that say Italy.
A wonderful country with friendly people and food I will miss for a long time.
I have to say, tho, it was great to have an American cup of coffee this morning!