Final Thoughts, Tuscany, Italy

This is my final blog post from this trip to Italy. 

In the image above, a classic Tuscan city scene - narrow street, bicycles leaning against a wall, people chatting at a storefront, muted earthy colors, brick, stone, and stucco buildings, flowers in window boxes, and laundry hanging out to dry.  I wonder if I could ever tire of these scenes? I was there for three weeks and feel I barely scratched the surface of just a very small portion of the country. What a wonderful place!

People have asked me if it's easy to drive in Italy.  Yes and no.  Roads are narrower, drivers are more assertive but, I wouldn't say it's necessarily more difficult.  The hardest part to me was processing the signage information quickly enough to make the correct choice.  Signs typically contain a lot of information as the image above demonstrates. Traveling at  50 -70 kph (30 - 42 mph), my old brain just didn't always process the info in time. Yes, I had a paper map, and a GPS that I brought from home with software for Italy, and even a human navigator in the passenger seat but still....there were times......towns along a route were more prominent on the signs than the route numbers - works great if you know what small towns are next along the route. I am more accustomed to driving by route numbers in the United States. But it sure was fun driving a fancy rented Audi with a 6-speed manual transmission!

And yes, there were a few rainy days during this idyllic trip. In the whole month of April (source: Accuweather), there were 3.2 inches of rain occurring on 12 days (only half of those 12 days were really rainy, the others were just a brief, passing sprinkle), average high 69 F, average low 49 F, overall average 59 F. It was pretty close to perfect active weather for tourism.

On the train ride back to Lucca from Florence, I took this quick image through the train window.  It's a beautiful hillside town sprawled along the natural contours of the land.  Not all towns have walls but, I venture to say that all towns have at least one church. Looks like a nice place to explore........

On airplanes,  I usually sit in an aisle seat so I can stretch my leg out from time to time and don't have the curvature of the fuselage to cramp me like in a window seat.  On the flight from Pisa to Munich on the way home, I lucked out and got both the aisle and window seats.  This is the view moments before landing at Munich airport. Beautiful flat rich farmland.  

Concluding thoughts: I only saw a small portion of the country of Italy but, everywhere there was constant beauty, friendly people, good weather, compelling history, great food, pasta, wine, nutella, gelato - clearly a place for a return visit! 

I understand why Italy, slightly larger than the state of Arizona (116,000 square miles vs. 114,000 square miles) manages to attract 46 million international visitors compared to the entire United States which only attracts 67 million. In tourism visitors, Italy ranks 5th in the world behind France at 83 million, United States at 67 million, China at 58 million, and Spain at 56 million.  

Arrivederci! Ciao! Fino alla prossima volta!