Gunn HS Choir 2011 Italy Tour: Tuesday travel from Rome to Florence

Today was a relaxed day - no concerts, no tours, no rehearsals. Only lots of time spent sitting on the bus (sleeping, mostly) and visits to a couple of beautiful Tuscan towns.

The weather is still holding - beautiful & clear. We really are lucky! We left Rome at about 8AM, and arrived in Montepulciano around 11. It's a hilltop village south of Florence, and for some reason there were almost no other tourists. Not sure why, as it was a perfectly beautiful day. We explored Montepulciano for couple hours, including a lunch break, and then headed to Pienza - another beautiful Tuscan hilltop village (but much smaller than Montepulciano). Lunch having been eaten earlier, this became a search for the perfect gelato and/or espresso (I prefer combining them into the affogato, the pinnacle of coffee/ice cream technology). And shopping, always shopping. This region is known for its leather especially, and lots of items were on display.

Pienza had even more dramatic views of Tuscany than did Montepulciano, if possible. Our visit was brief, and then we walked back down the hill to our buses and headed off for Florence, which we reached around 5PM and checked into the Gabriel D'Annunzio hotel. It's very nice, not luxurious but homey & clean. Most importantly (to me, of course) the WiFi is not only working, but free. Yay! so now it's 1:30 in the morning and I can finish this blog from my room - no more sneaking out to poach a connection from the other side of a garden wall, or having to barge into a hotel office and use the desktop PC.

Of course, the first thing every kid in our group (and some adults) did upon arrival was to turn on their laptop/iPhone/iPod wireless devices and we promptly crashed the DHCP server from the request overload. Oh well. It was working fine when we got back from dinner, at least.

Speaking of dinner, I think we had the best we've ever had on a choir trip - salad, then a pasta course ("pici", a local variety of noodle that is thick and served in a noodle sauce); a delicious roast chicken, and an orange marmalade dessert. It was delicious, and we got back to the hotel around 11PM and headed for bed.

Tomorrow we tour Florence and have some free time in the afternoon; once again, no singing or rehearsal a bit of a break for the kids.

I have been collecting photos from the other chaperones so that the blog doesn't show all the same kids all the time (mine & Linda's, that is) and hope to get more faces in. Tonight we were pretty tired and got a start, but tomorrow I really hope to get lots of kids' pictures out there.