Survivers: Anna, Peter, Shlakiyah

Italian holidays were short and sweet. Now we´re back in Stock and Ljubljana. And, most important; the drive was a complete success, no problems at all, Shlakiyah is running like an urverk, spinner som en katt, what do you say in English?

Italy was beautiful, of course, full of art, food and wine. Actually so full that you got dizzy, can you OD on renaissance and pasta?

We drove (or rather Peter did) from Trieste (boring) via Chioggia (cute and cheap) to Comacchio (I drove a bit!) were we spent the night on a poppy field. Continued to Ravenna (full of mosaics and nicely tourist-free), through Forli (they don´t sell food in Forli, only flowers) and into Tuscany and Florence. We slept the second night in a small monastery where my parents where supposed to be. Their efforts to make it to Florence deserves a whole new blog! Let´s say it included a thirty hour delay.

Florence was grand, David was grand, the Uffizi gallery was grand and the line-ups where very grand. It was wonderful!

We also got a chance to do some social anthropology in the field of, mainly German, camping-culture. Shlakiyah is petite in this context, among 100 000 euro caravans she is a joke. The culture includes such things as bringing your own seat-pillows when you go to a bar...

We continued to Siena after a few days but here the art-overdose became overwhelming, I couldn't go into the cathedral, the facade was enough. We went for beer and pizza.

San Gimignano was the final destination before we started the return. In this town everybody (maybe only half of the population?) was crazy about building towers in the 12th century. They built over seventy before one patrone (or something) decided no one could build taller than his tower, now about fifteen remains. I guess Freud would have something to say about the tower-obsession.

When passing through Florence on the way back we spent one night with a relative of Peters. Armeda is about seventy five and lives with her husband in a house with a garden full of roses and cherries, she stayed up until one drinking Chianti with us and talking about her illegal border-crossings during early Yugoslavian times.

I miss Italian coffee already, check this espresso!