RV and other travels around the World
This post will continue on with our 11-day Italy tour with the SmarTours company. Today, I will cover more of Rome in our walking tour of Rome, the Forum, the Coliseum, and finally a foodie walking tour in the evening. Rome is a very walkable city and we walked 6.4 miles on this day!
This is a continuation of my posts from our 11-day tour of Italy. In this post we board the bus and travel to Rome, but stop first at Assisi to walk the small town and see the Basilica of St. Francis then on to Rome for three nights. I will cover Rome in a couple of posts because there was so much to see and I took quite a few photos. Imagine that!
Continue reading “Italy Tour – Assisi and Rome (Rome day 1-2)”
Today’s post will focus on our next stop on the 11-day tour: Pisa (leaning tower and Square of Miracles) and then Florence; the Birthplace of the Renaissance. Florence is the capital of the Tuscany region and home to many masterpieces of Renaissance art and architecture. One of its most iconic sights is the Duomo, a cathedral with a terracotta-tiled dome engineered by Brunelleschi and a bell tower by Giotto. The Galleria dell’Accademia displays Michelangelo’s “David” sculpture. The Uffizi Gallery exhibits Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” and da Vinci’s “Annunciation.”
This is the second part of the Italy trip blog. Pat and my anniversary trip finally took place during two weeks in mid May. After a long two travel days we finally arrived to our first destination of the tour: Venice Italy, the city made up of 118 small islands and photo opportunities abound.
We have had this trip planned since June 2021 as a 50th wedding celebration for Pat and I. It was to have been in May 2022, but was delayed due to lingering Covid issues in Italy. But, we finally made it this year in May 2023! Joining us were Pat’s brother Mike and his wife Lorna who were also celebrating their 50th a year before ours. So, after all the waiting, planning, and trip preparations, we were finally off!
We left our Florida winter location on March 30th for our slow travel back to our home in the Virginia mountains. The drive is about 750 miles and while driving in the truck/trailer combination, I prefer to break the trip up into four segments, averaging 188 miles per moving day. That way we can be relocated and set up by 2pm and can go exploring.
One of our vacations from a strenuous retirement, is to take a cruise while we are already in Florida for the winter. This year I found a 6-day cruise on Royal Caribbean aboard the Jewel of the Seas. It was a good deal at less than $100 a day each for an inside cabin and it sailed out about 45 days from when I booked it. It was a beautiful warm week in late February and we had a surprise waiting for us on board! On to the Western Caribbean!
Orchid Lake RV Resort (OLRVR) is the place that we park the RV for the winter located in the town of New Port Richey, Florida. It is our home base of activities for exploring this part of Florida. In addition, the park has a huge list of activities that are all run by many volunteers. In today’s post, I will do an overview and look at what we do while here.
This is the last part of our quick 3-day bus trip from our RV resort to Key West and then back home again. Two bus loads of happy seniors made this 870 mile round trip excursion. It was some long, tiring days on the buses, but a good time was had by most of the group. In this segment, we stopped in the Everglades for airboat rides and an alligator show…
In my prior post, we loaded a large group of 100 people at our RV park into large buses and took off for a three day trip to the Everglades and Key West. The 463 mile trip was divided over the three days. They were long days on the buses, but we did enjoy the stops and of course Key West.