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Florence, Italy
43° 45' N 11° 15' E
May 20, 2007 05:26
Distance 0km

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To Florence

Text written in: English

We left Chicago at 2:30 PM yesterday on our way to our 2-week vacation in Tuscany! Everything was great with our near 8-hour flight. Kef purchased business class tickets, so we had plenty of room to spread out.

We landed in Frankfurt at around 5:30 AM and waited around for Passport Kontrol to open. It was supposed to open at 6:00... so much for German precision. The officers had other things on their mind I guess... they piddled around and finally opened up about 15 minutes late. Unfortunately we got in the wrong line... not that it wasn't going where we wanted, but that we got the guy I like to call "the Nazi" as opposed to his buddy who was passing everyone through quickly. This guy was interrogating everyone at length. He spent about 20 minutes back and forth with one guy before he finally turned him away. He turned the next person away too - who happened to be the one right in front of us. After he drilled us about everything from what we were doing to how long we would be there to how much money we had and how many credit cards, etc. he finally let us through. At which point we went to security where we were both frisked. Yes, people. Actually frisked. Nice. Also, I expected the Frankfurt airport to be modern and nice because it's such a hub. Most of what we saw was very industrial-looking. Needless to say I don't think I'll be taking any vacations to Germany. I was glad to get on the plane to Italy, where I'm thinking the people would be nicer.

We finally boarded our plane (from the tarmac) and were off to Italy.  Our plane was a short stumpy thing, but it got the job done.  We flew over the Alps and it was just amazing to see them from that vantage point.  So past the Alps, Lake Como, Milan, the hills of northern Italy (which look much more like mountains to me) and then into Florence's little airport.  It was much smaller than I thought it would be, but technologically as advanced as any large airport (and more so than some).

No problems getting the rental car from Hertz, then hit the road.  We had gotten the NeverLost GPS so we could easily get to our villa, but it didn't work.  So we relied on the directions from the website and my estimated coordinates in my geocaching GPS.  We took the scenic route through a bicycle rae and around narrow, curvy roads through the Tuscan countryside... but we got to Villa Baldasseroni without too much trouble and no backtracking.