Italy- Why Did I Wait 56 years to go there and what was I thinking to wait so long?

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to praise Italy.

For reasons I am only partly responsible for, it took me 56 years to get to Italy. I mean for God's sake I went to Finland BEFORE Italy. What's with that? I plead temporary insanity and ignorance. However, now that I have been to Italy, I understand why tourists have been going there for 2,000 years.

If you click on these photos you can see high resolution versions that are pretty cool if I do say so myself!

A Room With A View

This is the view from the apartment we stayed on the Cinque Terra. And while we didn't have a view in Florence, we did have a view worth every penny and effort it took to get to a rather obscure destination on the Mediterrean Sea.