A Tour of Italian Cities

I have been away from my computer for the last two weeks on holiday in Italy. It has been a long-standing wish to visit Venice, Florence and Rome and we managed to be able to spend a few days in each. Venice is a city where people live with the regular winter floods and have to try to plan for the sinking of the city each year, made worse by the river traffic. Public transport in Venice is by water taxi and it was a joy to walk around without worrying about cars. Our hotel on the Lido had a beautiful view across the water to the city and the basillica of St Mark's.

At the other extreme is Rome where the traffic is chaos and around 2 million people travel into the city each day to work. Finding a parking space can take up to an hour. Crossing the street can be taking your life into your hands. All noisy and chaos which fitted well with the Colosseum which still holds its atmosphere after hundreds of years. We had a guided tour of the Vatican, and the Sistine Chapel did live up to its expectations.

Florence on the other hand was a mixture of both, with quiet streets and large squares in which to wander within the historic centre. Many wonderful art treasures including Michaelangelo's David were awe-inspiring and it was quite exhausting to try to fit it all in. We shall have to go back!

The only fly in the ointment were the Italian baggage handlers' strike which meant we couldn't land in Venice and had to detour to Verona which made us late on arrival. Then on our return, their decision to leave everyone's luggage on the runway in Rome in a thunderstorm. Emptying a wet suitcase is not much fun -unpacking is depressing enough without that!

But it is nice to be back! I now have a mountain of post to deal with which is always one of the joys of going away. So now I need a holiday...