Tonight we are on the blessed little isle of Ireland. Early tomorrow morning we take a train tour that takes us to Cork and Killarney. We stay over night in Killarney and then we see the Ring of Kerry. Eventually it is back to Dublin.
I last left off with our last night in Rome. The next morning we had to get on an Italian train to Florence. We had a meeting with David. Liz was suppose to join us but she had some work to accomplish. So we kind of entered Florence unprepared. The train ride was about 90 minutes or so; Florence is about 100 miles from Rome. We made our way to gallery we were going to. We even found the place Liz suggested for lunch. We saw the Cathedral of Maria del Fiore. It is beautiful. The outside is intrinisic carvings and tile work. You expect the same from the inside, but it is rather sparse inside. The kids and Mr. Shiny did not go in because they were not appropriately dressed. Then we ventured to the academic center to see Michelangelo’s David. Yes, he is big and you can’t take any pictures in the Gallery. We did see some other cool sculptures and paintings also.
Then we stopped at McDonalds. Not to eat (although we ate at on in Rome), basically we stopped for a snack and to get our luggage from one train station. Then we had to go to another train station to get our overnight train to Paris. We had a little compartment on the train and it had little beds. The kids loved it. There were 3 levels of bed. Jasmine climbed to the top level with her iPod and books and settled herself in right away. Jane would only go the 2nd level. I ended up on the bottom below Jane which was rather clastrophobic. The kids slept fine. We had to wake them in the morning. Mr. Shiny and I did not do as well. Neither of us could get comfortable and I kept feeling my body jiggle when we went around bends. Although we didn’t sleep much it was pretty cool. We reached Paris in the morning.
I have to get to bed now because we have to be up before 6 tomorrow.