Hotel Miro Montecatini Terme

... that this town of 89,000 people gets millions of visitors a year because of such an architectural screw-up! Anyway, we took a few happy snaps of us in front of the Leaning Tower; freshly restored, it is now so bright and clean-looking, and with the bright blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds in the background, the pictures we took in front of the tower almost look fake (but really, we did go there, despite our bad stomachs; no t ...

nous sommes rester a florence pour terminer notre visite la ville en allant aux jardins boboli et bardini, situe dans la cours du palais pitti. Deux grand jardins qui a cette date n'ont plus autant a offrir qu'en ete. il n'y a plus de fleur, et la moitie des arbres n;ont plus de feuille, mais on a pu constater l'ampleur de la propriete en passant tout l'apres midi a ...

11.25.09/11.26.09 Under The Tuscan Sun: From Rome To Florence

Murray slept really badly last night, as he was up most of the night with a terrible stomach. Today (11.25.09), we were going to check out of our hotel early, drop our luggage off at the Rome train station, and hit the forums and the Palatine right away before catching an afternoon train to Florence. Instead, we spent the morning resting in our hotel room – then checked out at 11am ...

partie de pise pour se rendre a Florence en toscane. On s'approche tranquillement de la region de Chianti ! Encore uen ville magnifique ou l'on ne peut pratiquement rien prendre en phtoto tellement les rues sont etroites. Le duomo, le 3e plus haut de l'europe est visible de tres loin. Ensuite, de piazza en piazza, nous avons traverser la ville pour voir des tres grand edifice , souvent construit avant meme la decouverte de l'amerique!! Nous avons ...

... as the place was so cramped and nothing else to do in town, but ended up having a good night both nights we were there.


Sunday did the walk between the 5 towns from Riomaggore to Monterosso. Took about 4.5 hours including thestops in each town to check them out.
The views out over the Ligurian Sea are stunning. Leaving one town and seeing the next far off in the distance, and sometimes a lot higher up in altitude, was really cool.

... when I got back to the apartment it was gone. Gone. I immediately broke into a worry sweat and tore out my pockets. I went through every nook and cranny of my person and bag and came up empty handed. I needed a walk to cool down anyway, so I walked back to the ATM to look for the money and to get more if I didn't find it. 150 Euro. That had to make someone's day. I took about twice as long as I would have normally to walk to the ATM because I was scanning ...

... in Houston but none built in the process that regular domes have to be made. The work I did for the MN State Capitol was all done in herringbone technique too. The herringbone makes structure stronger and helps stabilize the building. This was also evident in US Capitol building which I am sure the tour I was on with the Tile Heritage Foundation was the last tour of that space in modern times since it happened a ...

... in the dome inside was stunning as well. We read that it was possible to climb the 493 steps of the dome to get a fantastic view of town. We waited in line behind a nice American family, who we spoke with a bit, then unfortunately learned it was €6 each to get up. We left the line to find something free to do, when the Grandmother detached herself from the rest of the family, walked over to us and offered to pay our way to the top. It was quite incredible of her to do that ...

From Siena, via San Gimignano, another cute little walled citadel more popular with visitors than locals, we headed off to the spa town of Montecatini Terme where we had arranged our own little Tuscan villa. A very relaxing four days driving around, having a swim, walks, reading, eating. Nomes thought the scenic route was necessarily at times which lead to our ...

... me it was some sort of military demo or something to that effect in Italian. So as I had about an hour, I decided just to hang around in the square and people watch. Now St. Mark's is definetely the place to people watch. There are a couple of little stands with guys selling bird feed for €1 and you can never fail to find someone feeding the pigeons whenever you get there. Today was particularly amusing. There must be a good 500-1000 permanent pigeon residents in ...