Month: May 2018

We are in Rome! It never seems like we have enough time to spend here, so much to see and so little time. This trip we are spending three days and nights before heading home.

Today we managed to get to Piazza Navona by 6am to have a chance to see it again before all of the crowds arrived. After taking some photos there, we took off to the Porto Portese Flea Market, spent a couple of hours getting to and walking around that. I have never been to any market bigger than this one, it literally was about a mile long! Next we walked to Palatine Hill and then on to the Roman Rose Garden. The views from Palatine Hill were amazing and the Rose Garden truly beautiful. There were rose bushes that had been planted in the 1800’s. We headed on down through Circus Maximus, past the Victor Emmanuel building and back past Piazza Navona to our apartment.

We had walked just under ten miles by the time we got back to the apartment so I stayed in for the rest of the evening. John headed out for dinner at a restaurant he had heard about, and brought me back McDonalds and my feet thanked me!

I take take so many photos, am at a place that has really good internet so it isn’t taking me forever to upload some of the shots I have, so I thought I would share some with you. Hope you enjoy!

This is the second time we have gone to Civita di Bagnoregio but it was still as awe inspiring as the first time we saw it. The hill it stands on has slowly eroded away until all that remains is the central part of town, balanced precariously on a stand of rock. It is almost like looking at a fairytale rendition of a magical castle placed out of reach by some evil witch. The town is only reached by a long, long bridge that rises up to the entrance. No cars can fit on the bridge, only motor scooters and the small Piaggio Ape, a tiny vehicle used to traverse the small streets in Italy. So in order to reach this beautiful little town, you have a great deal of walking and climbing to do. But if you can manage it, you will never forget it!

We were fortunate to be invited the other day to go to lunch in Panicale by some very special people. They spend a great deal of time in Italy, even more than we do, and they use Cortona as a base as we do. They have a wonderful blog with a lot of the history of the places they visit and well worth reading, blogginginitaly.com.

Panicale is a lovely little hilltop town in the province of Perugia in Umbria, with a fantastic view of Lake Trasimeno. We had been to the lower part of the town before, but never to the upper area so it was a great new experience for us. Not only did we get to drive through the fields where the beautiful red poppies are starting to show but they have a Cinque Cento which is my favorite car and we got to ride in that!

We were too busy having fun chatting and getting to know each other better for me to be bothered with too many photos, but the ones I did take will give you a small idea of how sweet this town is.