Nate's been itching for some skiing, so we decided to join the ski club and head to the Dolomites in Italy. It was a three day weekend, but we decided to extend it for the rest of that week, since I had a TON of overtime.
We headed out early Friday to ski at Rosskopf, Italy and then drive down to the town we'd stay with the club. We skied Kronplatz and around Alta Badia. Nate even took me into some powder, which was a lot of fun! i'm looking forward to more of that, although this year we may be out of snow.
After three and a half days of skiing, we were off to Verona. Romeo and Juliet, the Arena and Dante. We wandered around for some good photos in the morning and evenings, gotta get the good light. We made sure to see Juliet's balcony, passed Romeo's house, and Nate went into the Arena. Turns out not everyone likes dogs. Other than the short time there, it was a nice city. Pretty sites and much quieter than some of the other ciites we stopped.
We left Verona for Florence. Very excited to be in another large Italian city, we were thinking like Rome, or at least I was. Quite different. Not as many cool sites outside, but not bad. We saw David, Florence from high above in the catherdral's campanile, tower, and the bridge was really cool. Florence was going to be our home station for four nights, however, the overpopulation of scooters going thorugh EVERY square made it not so homey. I don't think we made it much more than 36 hours. Two night and we had already made plans for the rest of our stay in Siena.
On our way to Siena we had to drive through Pisa. It's not on the way, but it would be out of the way on any other trip, so we had to do it. Osu even felt compelled to hold up the tower as well, which all the asians thought was funny and they took pictures of us. Funny thing, as we sat down to eat a quick lunch before heading to Siena, a man from Ghana (?) came to sellus crap. He wanted to make friends first and made some connection to Germany. Then he gave us two little statue trinket things, and asked for a donation. We paid him off just to get him away form our table; I'm sure the way of many other tourists. The funny part is that Osu barked at him the entire time, as he does not like darker people, or old people.
The road to Siena from there was either the Autostrada or a drive through the hills. We chose the hills, as driving in Italy isn't always the most fun thing to do. Getting cut off is only half the battle, most is trying to not be sideswiped as you're driving defensively. Nate did an awesome job!
We passed through several small hilltop towns in Tuscany. It was sunny each day, so the landscape was wonderful to enjoy. A few stops had to be made for pictures, and we found a few towns to return to if there was time. One being Volterra.
We spent some time wandering Siena the first night, getting most of the town down. Areas were scouted for our morning sunrise, followed by next best shots and scounting eveing shots. As we finished up pictures and touring Siena, we planned for returning to Volterra and a few other towns along the way. We got up early the next morning to watch the sun rise over Monteriggioni, then Colle di Val d'Elsa, Volterra, and San Gimignano. All very cool cities, neat views and some had awesome towers and alleys to wander through.
By the end of our ten days, we were pretty spent. We went o bed around 7:30pm on Saturday night and got up at 3:15 Sunday morning for our long drive home. We beat most of the scary Italians, although we were pretty sure some of those other guys out on the road had been up all night. We got home by 1pm and were happy to get back in our groove.
Very fun trip, next time we'll probably fly into Naples and rent a car to drive around the rest of the boot. driving that far south would take quite some time, plus those crazy Italians all over the place.
