Arrivederci Roma

So, after slightly over two weeks, Silverback, Stephen and I are all back home in Leeds.

We visited Rome, Siena, rural Tuscany, San Gimignano, Pisa, Viareggio, Como - and Lake Como - Bellagio, Venice, Rimini, San Marino, Assisi, Pitigliano and then back to Rome for the flight home.

It was never intended to be an in-depth, see-every-museum tour - - more a "Flavour of Italy" tour and oh boy, it was most certainly that.

We saw scenery that made me gasp, both man-made and natural. We met very many friendly people. We saw wonderful works of art. We ate lots of pasta and quite a bit of ice-cream.

We took literally thousands of photographs: here's Silverback taking one of his many excellent photos: this one was in San Marino, and you can see more on his blog:

I haven't even begun to sort through mine yet: but here's one, again from the tiny independent country of San Marino, which is completely surrounded by Italy. I think it sums up the quirkiness and fairytale qualities of many of the buildings that we saw.

In San Marino there are several such towers, incredibly high above the surrounding landscape. If there's anywhere in Italy a mountain or hill that seemed impossible to build on, the mediaeval Italians clearly saw it as a challenge.

I'm really tired this evening - - - but as I said yesterday, it's been wonderful. Very grateful thanks in particular, of course to Silverback and to my husband Stephen for doing so much to make it so. To misquote Brian Clough - - Silverback and Stephen may not have been the best men who toured round Northern Italy in a car this summer, but they're in the top two.

And also thanks are due to Michel Thomas - - he may be dead and he may have been Polish, but his excellent audio course helped me to relearn my Italian and I plan to learn more.

Now I'm trying to get my head round being in Leeds again. It's not easy. Italy's grabbed a big piece of my heart.