Casa de Florence

So I was pleased this morning to discover that the rooms I requested for my stay in Florence had been reserved. Yippee!!! Still waiting to hear back on the Siena rooms. Another good find on www.cross-pollinate.com. They are called the Althea rooms and are supposedly in a non-touristy but very arsty part of town. I've heard rumor that Florence is very walkable, so I'll be getting my exercise staying outside the center, but I think it'll be a better experience, and more relaxing. Hopefully. Here's the information for the rooms: http://www.cross-pollinate.com/info.asp?id=387&kind=1&city=florence. Peruse at your leisure.

Oh, and the count is down to 112.

Hotels in Siena

So it is apparently quite the pain in the tush to get a hotel reservation in Siena. So far I've contacted 2 places, 1 that was full (the one I really wanted to stay in, boo) and the other only had a single without a bath. So I've moved up my price range and am waiting to hear back from a third, which has an awesome terrace that you can have breakfast in, and it sounds (according to Mr. Steves) that you are well taken care of. So keep your fingers crossed. And I've updated my itinerary to stay another night in Florence, so I don't have to squeeze Pisa in right before I hop the train to Siena. So complicated.

Lodging Update

I'm using the Rick Steves 2006 Italy book as my main guidebook. He lists several hotels by city, ranking them by price, and he has secured deals at almost all of them. One of the places listed in the Rome section is a website for finding bed and breakfasts, www.cross-pollinate.com. I went to the site, and was pleased to discover that they don't only have listings for B&B's, but also for apartments. The ultimate way to pretend to be a local. I've reserved my apartment for Venice. It comes with living room, double bed, private bathroom, and...it's non-smoking. It's also only 60 euro a night. Here's the website of the place I've reserved: http://cross-pollinate-com.ithost.ch/info.asp?id=278&kind=1&city=venice. I'm planning on making my Florence and possibly Rome reservations through here as well, although in Rome I might stay in an inn run by nuns...we'll see.

Also, I apparently lack the ability to count, so my countdown was off by a few days. There's only 125 days left.

More of a ramble than an update

I haven't made much forward progress in the rest of my hotel reservations. I have solidified my itinerary. I think it will be a mostly relaxing trip except for the 3 days in both Florence and Rome, where I'm stuffing as much as I possibly can into a short period of time. I've heard rumor that the cities aren't that great to stay in, very busy, and so I thought I'd do the tourist things and move on. The last week of vacation will be spent in southern Italy, Sorrento, Capri, Positano, being a beach bum and just enjoying the surroundings. Hopefully that will allow me to come home relatively relaxed. I don't think I'll miss work. This weekend's plan is to do a little luggage shopping. I bought a handmade journal at this great art exhibition in Santa Monica (Ashes & Snow) last weekend, so that's out of the way. I'm looking to buy a new day pack, must zip and be able to carry all my drugs (the legal kind) and a day's change of clothes and toiletries, so that if, god forbid, the luggage gets lost on the way, I'll have something to change into after a day of flying. A trip to REI is in the plans for tomorrow. So the count is at 138, just 4 1/2 months. Crazy short amount of time, but I'll be as anally prepared as I can be.