Travel Review: Trip to Italy & Greece, Rome, Tuscany, Capri, Athens, Lucca, Santorini, Pisa, Siena, San Gimignano, Colosseum

If I had to choose only one thing, it would be our time in Rome.  Our guide bent over backwards to accommodate us.  He answered all our questions with patience.  We enjoyed two meals with him, and it was as though we had a fifth friend at our table.  By the way, those meals, one in the Jewish Ghetto and the other in Castelli Romani, were some of the best food we have ever eaten.  My husband and I do not eat grains or sugar, and our guide was able to communicate this to the waiters, who had no trouble substituting a different meal from what they had planned.  The restaurant selection was superb!

However, we all enjoyed Lucca too! It was a great place to begin our trip, with fewer tourists.  It has the ancient charm that we were looking for, yet the facilities at restaurants and our hotel were terrific. Our guide kept us enthralled with her stories about  groups who tried to attack Lucca and about how Lucca came to be such a great silk distribution and banking center (and how now their primary export is toilet paper, which we found amusing).  None of us wanted to leave Lucca, but Rome awaited.

Neither my husband nor I was able to walk the steps up to the top of the Tower of Pisa.  Our guide took us instead to the cemetery, which we enjoyed immensely!  She was very willing to make accommodations for us.  We also toured the Baptistry and Cathedral, which, in our opinion, were far more interesting than the tower itself.

Walking where others walked thousands of years ago brought chills to my soul.  I would not trade that experience for anything!