Trippin'

We leave in 9 days. My Mom came up the other day and we laid out the trip. Here it goes:

we arrive in Florence and spend the first two days roaming the city. She did organize a 2 hour personal tour for our second afternoon. There were longer group tours but it sounded like it would be too much for Aaron. This way the tour guide will gear it toward our interests.

on our third day we head out to visit Siena . Which I hear is an amazingly beautiful city. I first saw it in the movie My House in Umbria , let's just say it was love at first sight. then we are back to Florence and on to Ravenna for two days. My Mom has set up a tour guide here too. This the city where her Grandmother is from, we are hoping to find out a bit more about her. My Mom and aunt Paula went to Kingston MA yesterday to do some research. I know that they did find out that there is a 700 page book (written in Italian I believe) written about the family in the Harvard Library. The people historical society were pretty impressed and said we will find the family name all over Ravenna.... that's all I know so far.

From Ravenna will then head up to Venice . I am very excited about Venice.. I do hear it's very expensive and hard to navigate though, luckily my Mom set up a tour for Venice too. One form of advice we received was that if you are walking down and alley and it opens up into water just shrug your shoulders, turn around and walk the other way. Sounds like a good plan to me. My only concern is that we need to be @ the Venice airport by 5:30am, so we will need to get a water taxi around 4am. not sure how that's going to pan out.

our last day in Venice we will take a day trip to Verona . Aaron has wanted to go here ever since they studied Romeo and Juliet last year. Word is that this is where my Great-Grandfather comes from.