We arrived in Rome on April 22, 1996, the day after our wedding in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We stayed there for 3 days, walking, bussing, and trolleying around the sites. Then we picked up our blue Fiat Punto and headed north up the Eastern coast. We drove to a seaside town called Follonica where we stayed the night. We took a short drive up as far as Genova, then headed back to a very crowded Rapollo and drunkenly picked sour oranges after dinner. The next morning we stopped in tourist Hell (Pisa) and saw the sights and smelled the people. We went further across all the way to Firenze (Florence) where we had a hotel reservation for the weekend. It was very crowded and the sewage smell was very unpleasant. We couldn't imagine spending 4 hours in the line for the Uffuzi, but we did see the cathedral and the David exhibit was spectacular. Kolu bought me a handmade Leather attache as a birthday gift. We went to Verona which was very nice and then further north to Peschieria which is on Lago Del Garda.The lake region is by far the most worthwhile. It's just really beautiful. The little villages like Salo (Lago Di Garda's West bank) and Torno (on the Eastern bank of Lago Di Como) which we stayed at tend to have nice restaurants and shops. It's all very quaint and cozy.Milan marked the end of our trip. Our hotel, a huge, impersonal place, ended up being pretty far away from everything, but walking distance to a train station. The cathedral in Milan was the coolest (of the 6000 that we saw in Italy). It's much more of a modern, commercial city than the other cities we stayed in. Oh yeah, just so ya know, there are two airports in Milan - so if you're heading back to the states, and you ask someone where the bus to the airport is, and they say, "Oh, she's right over there", you really ought to make sure that you're going to the right airport.
This is North of Follonica, near Genova.
Verona was much nicer than Florence.
Salo is a very beautiful village in Northern Italy.
