We rented a car from Florence and toured Tuscany for nine days following Rick Stevens' recommendations: Siena, San Quirico d' Orcia, Volterra, Lucca then back to Florence. The area is wonderful and had been on Pam's bucket list for a long time, it lived up to expectations. While in Volterra we stayed in an AIRBNB that was a watch tower in the old city wall. In Pisa, Pam pushed the tower up a little bit.
There's a big difference between Rome and Florence, Rome had heavy traffic and we took public transportation, Florence was busy, but we walked everywhere. We started with a foodie tour then a city tour, the next two days we walked around the city getting lost. We saw the statue of "David", ate the seafood market.
Our AIRBNB was a one room apartment on the first floor, it was just what we needed with a washer. We were Rome a week and visited: Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, Colosseum, Roman forum, Palatine Hill, Altar of the Father Land, Trevi Fountain and the Patheon. Saint Peter's Basilica was so big and beautiful! There are too many places to visit, you could spend a month here and not see everything. We had some down time here too, one day we walked our 5 miles in a park near the AIRBNB and saw just as many roman ruins walking the trails.
We took the Royal Caribbean Oasis stopping at Cadiz, Malaga, Alicante, Valencia ending in Barcelona. The Oasis is a very large ship, we needed a large one for the 9 days at sea. While in Alicante we visited friends Stacy and Alan that we met on another cruise around South America. They are full-time travelers like us, but they purchased an apartment in Alicante where they live up to three months at a time. It was great visiting them and having a local to spend the day with. Once in Barcelona we flew two hours to Rome's FCO airport and went to our AIRBNB.
We are coming close to completing our 2025 Europe travels with a 12-night Northern Europe cruise starting in Copenhagen and ending in South...
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