The Geldings are off to Italy. Wednesday morning we are on the big bird to Munich (where, by God, a man can actually smoke in the airport) and then on to Florence and Sienna. We will eat and drink our way through Tuscany. We will go to Rome for a day to see the refurbished Sistine Chapel. We will reminisce about when we were here 32 years ago, young, vigorous, flat bellied and with a full head of hair (albeit high and tight) and Mrs. G was unknowingly carrying our first baby. We will escape the pissing matches going on here for a brief week and rely on the Paris Herald Tribune for news.
Fantastic! I hope you a wonderful, memory-filled trip. As a Europhile who hasn’t “done” Italy yet, I am envious. Have a great time, Spavined, and I will definitely be watching for a thread about it upon your return.
Go for the gusto! I like your vision.
YOU WILL NEVER REGRET DOING THIS!
So if I pack light and meet you at the airport can I sneak away with you?
Have fun and be safe. Iowa will be just like you left it when you get back. Nothing ever changes around here.
Have fun. I’m also out of here on Thursday for a fun-filled trip to Venice and Florence with my mom and my sister. ON my first trip to Italy 12 years ago I hadn’t develop a taste for wine yet. Luckily that has changed, and so I’m plannning on wine with lunch and wine with dinner this time out.
porcupine, don’t forget about the all important wine with breakfast. And wine with cheese. And wine with wine.
No no no…take mrs beagle and me. We’ll dump the kid off on Kricket…she’ll never notice.
You know beagledave you are probably right.
I had ten of the little heathens in the house tonight and I probably wouldn’t have noticed if another one got snuck in there on me.
And she’s a doll too. But, you should be warned you may not get her back the way you drop her off. My kids are like the borg and she might be assimilated. 
Bon voyage.
We’ll keep the porch light on for ya’.
I was really hoping this thread was going to be about different ways to say “let’s blow this pop stand.” But have fun in Italy anyway
stay safe 
I am taking the foregoing as popular demand for an after action report. So here it is.
We got into Florence Thursday morning after some 24 hours in transit. Then to Sienna where we had a hotel on the south edge of town. Nothing I had read prepared me for Sienna. Like some other places, Rothenberg in Germany and Carcassone in France for instance, it had once been a regional political and economic power but fell from influence and became a back water with the unintended result that it was preserved as it was 500 years ago and more. For Sienna the fall from importance came in the 1300s when Florence became the dominant town and the cradle of the Italian Renaissance.
The town is a late Gothic/Romanesque jewel with narrow twisting streets, four story stone and brick buildings, an impossibly picturesque city square and imposing Romanesque city hall with an impossibly phallic bell and watch tower and a mixed Romanesque and early Gothic cathedral. We spent a couple of days just wandering the canyon streets. The view from our hotel window at sunrise was just spectacular.
The food was great. There was the standard Italian menu with the addition of the local speciality–a two-pound T-bone steak at Euros 3.50 per 100 grams. Another guy and I split the steak and we both had more than enough to eat. The local wine was nothing to sneeze at either. The Grapa(spelling?) will take the top of your head off, but it is better to suffer that than to refuse the restaurant’s gift of a shot of the stuff.
The locals were friendly and helpful. We saw no sign of resentment or ill will over the war in Iraq. Between Midwestern English and bad German we were able to make our selves understood and to understand. Germans, incidentally are inveterate day trippers and are all over the place.
The only disappointments were the Trans-Atlantic flight and the Sistine Chapel. The flight may be the subject of an entry in the Pit if I can calm down enough to express myself in language acceptable there. Guess how many time I was required to display my passport, tickets and stocking feet in the course of a trip down a tunnel like corroder in the Munich airport?
The Sistine Chapel was a disappointment because we could not get in. There was a three-hour wait to get tickets to get into the Vatican Museum and the powers in charge quit selling tickets at 1:30 so as to let everyone who got in see every thing before the place was closed up for the night. We had allotted only one day to Rome. We should have taken two days with one day set aside just to get into the Vatican Museum. Taken with every thing else, however, this was a minor disappointment.
It is worth adding here that the Pope has much nicer restrooms than the Italian National Highway Department.
Terrific! It all sounds just like I imagined it: the food, the ambience, the grapa, the sites, the history. Viva l’Italia! (or whatever). And do start that Pit thread about the flying part. I’d love to hear about that too.
I went through the Munich airport about a year ago and, along w/everyone else in line, had to do the shoe thing as well.
Thanks for sharing, Spavined!