Farewell Italy! It's been a wonderful 3 weeks!Good day!! Today, I leave my beloved Italy after 3 amazing weeks! I visited Rome, San Gimignano and the Tuscan Countryside, Venice and Florence! I'm so happy that you followed me during my trip and hope you enjoyed the experience I shared! If you missed any part of my Italy trip - check the link for every Daily during this trip. I also encourage you to use the itinerary I created if you are planning a trip to any or all of these cities. It can certainly save you time when planning hotel and accommodation stays as well as tours and tour companies in each of the cities. I spent my last night in the Rome Airport Hotel in Fiumicino, which is connected to the Leonardo da Vinci airport. It was extremely convenient and a lovely hotel at that. The kids spent their last evening in Italy in the pool, splashing it up. Bathing caps were required, and the kids thought it was a novelty to have to wear these! I take off at 10:30AM Rome time, so this will be a short one I will have landed in New York by the time today's Daily is posted. Hope your Monday is a fabulous one. Here's to many more memorable and fabulous trips!! -E | Galway, Ireland - Day 20It's another Monday, but this here in the UK it happens to be a bank holiday. Their bank holidays seem to closely coincide with our Memorial Day & Labor Day. And it's certainly a big deal all over the entire country! One heck of a big party over here!! Families, friends, old, and young. All gathering for the biggest fest of the year! And for London it's taking place in Notting Hill as Carnival! The only reason we don't happen to be heading to the Carnival ourselves is because we are doing a bit of island hopping and going to the lush green and beautiful country of Ireland! We are now in Galway; to satisfy an itch that I've had since our last visit to Ireland in 2011. Yippie! Only thing is that I seem to have thrown my back out and am in a great deal of discomfort. Oh well, I'm glad this happened on day 20 instead of day 1. I'll soak it tonight, and hopefully feel a bit better by tomorrow! During that last and very amazing visit to Ireland, I hadn't planned enough time to spend in the city of Galway. It wasn't until I was here in person did I realize that I should've planned more time there and less time in Cork (didn't care for it much over there.) But until you go, you never know! To catch you up to last night: We had a delicious dinner at 222 Veggie Vegan in London for our last night there. It turned out to be my favorite in London...Doesn't it always happen like that on the last night?! And then...there was the very annoying ride on the Tube back to our hotel. All of the excess drinkers, who had already partied a bit too much were out and being incredibly obnoxious! My poor eyes had to witness the likes of a pole dancer, a couple of morons hanging upside down in the tube, and then the entire underground closing down for the night! Ugh! Then being too far to walk back to our hotel, the choices seemed to be either bus or cab. I vote cab, and as quickly as possible! I need to get away from the wackos! After walking several blocks, there were no cabs for hire; but there were rickshaws! I got to chatting with one, and Dave & I decided to go for it and take a rickshaw ride back to our hotel. The driver told us to just imagine that we're taking a really slow convertible cab ride! Lol Anyway, it was a night for the record books! See ya back here tomorrow! -T |