Last week Diane and I had a very nice vacation in Italy - visiting both Rome and Florence. We were very excited to take this trip - our first time leaving the United States together and ‘going abroad.’ Neither of us had been to Italy before. In fact my experiences in Europe have been very limited up until now.

I’ll be writing up posts about things we learned and enjoyed doing and also I’ll also include some of the 674 digital pictures we took while we were there.

This blog might be about our Italy trip for awhile … so I hope people will be patient with me on that score. This morning we sat down together and wrote up some basic notes about our trip. I plan to use my blog to fill in those notes a little bit - but it may take awhile since there was so much that was new and exciting for us in that part of the world.

We left on Friday afternoon (11/9/07) for JFK airport and got back last night (11/16/07).

While in Rome we stayed at Hotel Gambrinus.

I really liked this hotel. The staff there was very quick to help out with requests and to provide directions to places we wanted to go. One time I picked up some food and brought it back to the hotel and asked them if we could “borrow a plate.” Right away someone dashed down to the dining area and grabbed a couple of plates and some forks and brought them to me. It was a simple thing, but I appreciated how friendly and responsive they were.

The hotel location was pretty good as well.

The hotel also provided a computer with free internet access. Sometimes a person had to wait to use the computer - but I was surprised that it was free. We did not bring a laptop along with us and we were not using our cell phones (though we had them with us) - so that service came in handy for sending quick notes to family and friends.

On the adjoining streets near our hotel there were some orange trees. I’ve never seen fruit trees in such a busy urban landscape before and thought that was pretty cool. I imagine an orange might occasionally fall on the windshield of a parked car - but I doubt it causes any damage. I wonder if anyone ever eats the oranges. Regardless, it’s a very nice thing to see.