Day 11 - Ritorno a casa

Wednesday we travel home, the trip is over and we go back to the real world, at least most of us, Eamon is continuing on his world exploration trip, his next stop is Munich.

On Monday when the group was really first getting to know each other, we had a group photo taken at the Colosseum. On our last day in the bus, Fabrizio gave everyone a copy of the photo as a gift as well as contact information for everyone on the trip (unless one decided they did not want to be on the list). It is a nice photo and included Fabrizo and our local specialist from Rome, Susanna.

The departure from Rome went pretty much as planned, Bob and Maribeth had an earlier flight than us and got on the 6AM shuttle to the airport, no breakfast for them. June and I were on the 8AM shuttle and had time for breakfast and to say good bye to Eamon before leaving for the airport.

As we left Italy for our connection to Paris (CDG), we flew over the Alps, they are beautiful.
















I will say, be it the USA or EU, the airports are huge and confusing. The signage is not great and airport workers in general just don't appear to be very helpful.  We had to change terminals in both CDG and JFK, and both were lots of walking, confusing turns, etc.. Asking for directions usually gets you some half effort from an airport work.  We made it, but they don't make it easy.

The easiest part was finding our car waiting at the BTV airport thanks to our friends that Kilmartins, who dropped it earlier in the day.  We have great friends.

We flew Rome to Paris to NY to BTV, left our hotel 8AM Italy time and arrived at our door just a bit before midnight, overall about 22 hours of travel. So we got to bed a bit after midnight but I was up at 4AM (my body thinks it is 10AM) my first thought was..wow this is a big hotel room....and our bedroom is not that big, amazing how your prospective changes.

When I got up it was 16F and we are going to get snow Friday...welcome to the real world.

Overall it was a great trip, we got a taste of Rome and the northern cities of Italy.  You have to visit to really appreciate the history. The trip was rather fast paced, but to there is really no other way to fit so much into a bit over a week. 

I think Trafalgar did a pretty good job on the tour, Fabrizio and Fabio were both great and every local specialist brought something new to the experience. I am not sure other tour companies employ local specialists like Trafalgar, but they really do make a difference. The local specialist tend to be born and raised in the city they represent and are proud of their heritage. This adds color to their tour, Helen from Luca would say "those bastards from Pisa", Fabrizio warned us she was a "hot pepper" and she was a hoot.

The other thing that the tour company brings is access, if we were on our own, we might have not been able to tolerate the lines, especially in Rome. With Trafalgar we cut the line at St Peters Basilica, the Vatican Museum and the Colosseum, which can be huge. The tour company also provides additional experiences (some optional) that you would probably not get on your own.  We really enjoyed Villa Il Leccio in San Gimignano and the Villa Machiavelli in Florence. Some of the experiences seemed like a sales push, for example the Murano Glass factory should have been optional,  it was interesting but it took a good part of the morning and we are not the kind of people who buy $500+ pieces of glass work..just saying. The meals provided by the hotels tend to be less authentic than what you find on your own in a good restaurant, but I guess they are trying to accommodate all palates.

Finally, the tour company removes all the stress of finding hotels and transportation. The cities in Italy are narrow and crowed, we just sat back and enjoyed watching Fabio do his magic, at times it was like being on the Harry Potter Knight bus. The hotels they booked were clean and generally located where you could walk to attractions. In Rome we walked to the Vatican the day before the tour started and in Venice we walked everywhere from our hotel.

We very much enjoyed the company of Bob and Maribeth and getting to know Eamon a bit.  Bob was our 'not so local' specialist, he did lots of homework and was continuously reading up on our next attraction, he was a good supplement to the local specialists. Eamon was our Navigator, google maps gets really confused by narrow alleys and tall buildings, Eamon has a nack for ignoring google but following her maps. We really enjoyed hanging with Eamon and wish him safe travels and prosperous future. My primary skill was getting us into places were it took google and Eamon's navigation skills to get us out..but I consider this part of the adventure. June and Maribeth just shake their heads and put up with us all.  Trips are so much more fun when you travel with old and new friends.

Arrivederci alla prossima volta.