Arrivederci Italia!

Ah...fair Firenze!

This will be my last post on this blog. I am back in the good ol' U.S. of America after a 20-hour sojourn via train, plane, bus and ferry. The jet lag is starting to wear off now and it's good to be back, but I already miss IT-lee, as my mother calls it. Well...maybe not the crowds and hustle & bustle but it was a great adventure full of learning; both the hard way and less hard way. I hope those of you who have slogged your way through these posts have gleaned just a little of what I experienced. So much more could be shared but suffice it to say that if you can, GO! Winter may not be the best time to visit but at least there are fewer crowds and the costs slightly less...not cheap mind you, but reasonably affordable. That's especially true if you do some shopping around before committing - I can't even imagine what it was like before the age of the internet. Need a room in Milan tomorrow? No problem. A ticket to the Scrovegni Chapel? Piece of cake. Trains? Planes? Reservations at Chez Pretense? Got ya covered. But aside from all the day-to-day planning of one's itinerary, Italia is in the end a land of variable climates, foods, people and ways of saying "Buona sera!" (Florence does it different than Venice; go figure.) Thanks for reading and as the locals say,

"Chiao, grazie and buon viaggio!"