Fasser Family Blog

On Day 5, we packed up and headed to Florence to pick up our car and then drive to the villa in Rufina. It was about a 2 hour train ride which was a new experience for us with all of our luggage.

We were all impressed with Florence, even though we were there for less than an hour and wanted to come back. Once we acquired the car, we headed out of town, but stopped at a small ristorante in the suburbs for a tremendous lunch. We didn’t speak any Italian, they didn’t speak any English, but the food was delicious.

The road trip to the villa was interesting. The drive to Rufina from Florence was beautiful – a twisty two lane road that constitutes a highway in Italy – but once we got to Rufina, we had some issues. We missed a turn and went about 3 miles down a ONE way windy road that put us way out in the middle of no where. On the way back up the road, Lindsay got out and was sick – poor kid. We found the right road and went uphill about 3 miles on another twisty, turny road.

The first impression of the Castle D’ Acona (The villa) was worth it. Soanha (our chef for the week) was there to great us and show us around. We fell in love with both Soanha and the Villa immediately and spend the rest of the afternoon at the pool. A fun week was waiting for us. Pictures below.

Prior to leaving, we made reservations for a guided foot tour of the Vatican. This gets us past the looooooong line waiting to get in and gives us an expert to show us the highlights and give us the back stories behind a lot of the works, building, rooms, etc. Shirley wasn’t feeling well in the morning so she missed the tour. The Vatican was an amazing experience in it’s sheer volume of works. If you spent 30 seconds on every piece, it would take 12 straight years to see everything. We didn’t have that kind of time . Pictures below:

We spent the day at the Villa Borghese park in Rome. It’s kind of the Central Park of Rome. A former residence that now houses a fantastic museum, pond, bike trails, concert space, etc. We had a very relaxing, wonderful day. Check out the pics below. You can click on the picture to see the full images and slideshow on Picasa:

Hello happy readers and blog aficionados. We returned safe, sound and tired from Italy around 1am Monday morning getting home by 2am after 22 hours of travel from Rome. What an exciting, wonderful vacation we had. The food was magnificent, the art was inspirational, everyone traveled well, we made some new friends and saw a truly beautiful part of the world. I’m working on uploading pictures from our 16 days and Michelle is working on finishing up her journal on food and people. Look for more posts with lots of pictures very soon. Ciao!