Sunday: Ötzi. My original plan for the drive to Italy was to make it into an all day scenic drive. But when we woke up to another foggy, drizzly day, it seemed better to just take the shortest route, and hope the weather was better on the other side of the Alps. Anne wanted to get caches in ...

Day 1: Tuesday. We got to Venice on the train at about 1:30, figured out the Vaporetto (Venice mass transit equivalent of a city bus) and got to our hotel, Pensione Guerrato a little while later. After unpacking we headed out for a short vaporetta cruise (we bought the 48 hour transit pass) ...

It's the end of our second day in Florence. Time flies when your having fun! We're back in our room relatively early for once–it's only 9:15. Last night at this time we hadn't started dinner yet! And we're listening to the Red Sox broadcast, streaming on the Internet, since they're playing a day ...

I've been working at Constant Contact since March of 2005. One cool benefit we have is a paid one month sabbatical (in addition to regular vacation) after ten years of service. Around the holidays last December it occurred to me that mine was coming up and I ought to start thinking about how to ...

Tuesday: Arrival at La Montalla. It was a long drive (over 500 km/300 miles) to La Montalla, our agriturismo in Tuscany. Since most of it was on the autostrada, we got to experience sticker shock at Italian tolls–over 30 Euros due when we got off. We arrived around 3 pm, only to encounter a note ...

Thursday: Off to the Alps. Thursday morning we packed up, bid farewell to Frau Lee and and headed off for our next stop, Reutte, Austria. It was a pretty long ride and rather than heading straight there we took a slight detour to Lindau on the shore of the Bodensee (Lake Constance) a large ...

Day 1: Thursday. Our train arrived at Munich Hauptbahnhof (the main train station) at just after 6 am. We decided to see if we could find coffee and breakfast somewhere before walking to our hotel. Our first observation was that Munich is not an early rising town. We headed out of the station ...

We've been here almost a week and the weather has been terrific. The only rain was a sprinkle as we arrived in Florence on Saturday. Yesterday (Sunday) was cool, with highs in the 50's. The Florentines were bundled up, but we were comfortable in jackets. Today was glorious–bright sunshine and ...

After quite a bit of research and discussion, we have at least the outline of a plan for the trip. Originally, my thought was to pick up the car in Munich, drive south through Austria to Venice, then on to Rome and Florence, making stops in the countryside (Umbria and Tuscany) along the way.