5C's Que Pasa

The Franciscan church of Santa Croce began in 1295 and contains over seven centuries of Florentine and Italian history.  This is where we spent our last day in Florence, May, 30th.

Dubbed “The Temple of the Italian Glories”, Santa Croce contains more skeletons of Renaissance masters than any other church in Italy.

We were honored to be standing at the tomb of Leonardo DaVinci.

Another Italian great…..

In case you can’t make it out, this is the tomb of Galileo who died in 1642.

So very many special people who shaped our world lay here in this church.

We were truly humbled to stand here.

Yes, Michelangelo who died in Rome in 1564 miles away from his beloved Florence.  The people of Florence were so determined to return Michelangelo’s remains to his home that they smuggled his body back to Florence.

The numbers here correspond with the words in the photo above and explain how each section honors Michelangelo.

The tomb was designed by Giorgio Vasari in 1570.

Here lies the tomb of the most popular opera composer in history, Rossini who died in 1868.  Rossini penned 39 operas including the famous Il Barbiere di Siviglia/The Barber of Seville.

Truly a remarkable end to our time in Florence.

We walked for a bit cleaning our minds of what we had just experienced.  So many campers all over the place.  Good for them for having the courage to drive through all the city centers.  Perhaps we will attempt it one time.

We crossed the River Arno and yes that is The Ponte Vecchio.

It is a medieval stone closed-spandrel segmental arch bridge, noted for still having shops built along it, as was once common long ago.

The Galleria Uffizi where I had my third fall two days prior.

We actually had dinner right on The Ponte Vecchio.  Colin had a ravioli with pine nuts and this was an eggplant parmesan.  A wonderful light dinner with more great wine.

So many small but interesting cars in Europe.

This is how garbage is dealt with.  Every few blocks there are stations to drop your garbage, glass only, plastic only, cardboard only, a mix of a few things and the last brown one is for miscellaneous garbage.  You carry your garbage out to the bins and they are emptied at least every two days.

Apparently sunsets taken from the Ponte Vecchio are the thing to do but this is the best I managed in Florence as were almost back to our VRBO.

Our June calendar girls.  The first photo is Caeli barking at the horses as they head home at night.  The second shot is of the girls barking at an iguana, you can see its tail at the top of the fence post.  Carmeh is running like the wind on the beach in the last photo.  My action girls.

Sadly we came home to a jungle.

For what we paid them to water for four weeks I had hoped that they might have done some weeding.  Not!

If you look closely to the left you will see kale.

The beets are easier to see.

A bit of Swiss chard among the weeds.

Can you see carrots in the middle of those weeds?

There is supposed to be a tomato plant in there!

We stopped for breakfast here at Porto Venere, just before the five villages.

My shot of a small boat in the port.

Our breakfast with a view. One of the best croissants on the entire trip.

One of the villages.  We did stop here later on the train.  Note the vineyards on the steep slope.

Monterosso where we stopped for over two hours.

Taken within the village.

No I did not drain the glass of spritz but it sure would have been nice.

We had a very very delicious lunch here from the local fish fry, the tuna salad and the great pesto lasagna not to mention the fabulous vino bianco.

So many interesting buildings.  It is always laundry day somewhere.

We stopped here via train in Manarola.

Good place for a stroll….

…and a gelato.

Just another interesting colorful  shot.

Another of the villages we walked through, Riomaggiore.  So many photos and hard to chose which to show you.

Between Florence and La Spezia area are the quarries where marble for Michangelo’s David statue originated. These are located in the Apuan alps. Chunks of these mountains have been bought by the Chinese and ?? Dubai or ??Iran.

All along the highway are huge blocks of marble that have been cut from the mountain.  These last two photos were taken from a moving bus which is why they are blurry.

I just found this photo in the camera tonight.  Colin must have taken this as we landed on Sunday.  The lake in the middle is our lake, officially called Ellison lake but known as Duck Lake.  The narrow lake at the top of the photo is Lake Okanagan, the largest lake in our area, it goes for miles.  Just down a tad on the top right is Woods Lake.  Our home is at the top middle of Duck Lake.

Taken during a storm a few nights ago. Interesting play on colors.  There is also just tiniest bit of rainbow showing.

We were shocked at the fish prices yesterday while at Costco.  Fresh wild sockeye @ 59.99/kg or 59.99 per 2.2 pounds of salmon. WOW!!!!

Last year tuna was more expensive but not this season at $44.99/kg or $44.99 per 2.2 pounds of tuna.

Last May we only got the one feed of Copper River  @ 89.99/kg.  This year as we were in Europe we missed it, I can’t imagine how much it had been this year.  Yes that is $89.99 per 2.2 pounds of Copper River salmon, $45.00 per pound of fish.

Back in May 2014 Copper River we paid $44.99/kg.  Prices have certainly gone up.  The best salmon ever is becoming too much for us to buy.  Even back in 2014 it was expensive.

Today was day two of being a human pin cushion.  Fortunately I have a week before I get my final two treatments for the year.  I have to wear the thick thigh high stocking for the first 24 hours and then I can take them off about 7PM as long as my legs remain elevated.

You might remember that last June when we came back from Venice that our home had been flooded as well as the storage area for the RV’s here at our park.  This is the final rebuild before the marks outlining the sites were put down.

Hard to believe that we were out of our storage area for a full year due to the ground water problem.  They have rearranged the rows to increase the number of rental sites which makes things a bit tighter.  We parked more the the left of our site in this photo in order to be able to open our slides ( one on each side ) so that we can get our carpets cleaned in a few weeks.  Always something to do.  We are happy to have the RV back here in the park as it makes it much easier to go back and forth in the golf cart.