Some random, and fairly specific, recollections/thoughts from my family's summer vacation in Italy:

Tuscany is a BEAUTIFUL, beautiful place that I highly recommend visiting. If you will be in the vicinity of Florence and don't have lodgings yet, stay at La Boscarecce -- it's maybe half an hour outside of the city, a little tricky to find (you have to go up a STEEP dirt road that really looks like someone's driveway until you realize there's a little village on top of the hill), but the woman who runs it is just about the nicest person you'll ever meet, the food is AMAZING (I believe the woman's son is the chef, and boy is he good at what he does), the rooms are clean and picturesque, and the view is wonderful.

If you go into Florence and want to visit the Uffizi (which I highly recommend), get advance tickets. We waited about three hours in line, on our only day in Florence, to get in. (It was SO worth it.)

Up in the lakes region, near Sant'Anna and very close to the shore of the lake, is The. Best. Gelato. Place. EVER. I wish I could remember what it's called, LOL... If you will be right there, I can maybe sort of give you semi-vague directions. However, if you are in that area, DO NOT stay at the Locanda Sant'Anna. We did, and the day we had to leave early to catch a train, the family running the place had just sort of... disappeared. Breakfast wasn't open when it should have been, there appeared to be no one in the house, and we couldn't find anyone to pay for our stay. We ended up just leaving our credit card number and going. My dad ended up getting in touch with them by e-mail later and getting some totally BS excuse.

Also, don't drive unless you are okay with having a heart attack per minute. Extremely narrow, very twisty roads plus crazy speeding Italian drivers equals SCARY SCARY SCARY. The problem is that driving also lets you see random, off-the-beaten-track things (we found a Botticelli just hanging in a little village church. Just HANGING there. No security or anything whatsoever. You could get within six inches of it. It was INCREDIBLE) that are really fun and interesting.


~Chrysan"the driving is almost making me not want to go back, but the food was SO GOOD"themum~





...umm, d'ya think I used enough caps there? ;)