Man, I'm bad at this. A month has passed since I only partially reported on our Italy trip, and now it's already starting to blur together. I'll do my best, although I doubt it matters much.

We set off in the morning to tour around three old villages (I suppose they're all old), taking a longer stop at Montepulciano. First we went off in search of some cheese in Montichiello (Pecorino cheese).

We were lead to a fabulous meat and cheese shop and were given a selection of cheese to taste, including a truffle cheese, which I found particularly amazing.

We also happened to find a cat huddled up in the square in front of the main church, which some people thought to be very cute, while others (after the fact) thought that perhaps it was huddled up, watery-eyed and sat in the middle of the square because it was actually quite sick.

I didn't go too near it. Pienza was next, a really small walled village on the side of a hill with an amazing view of the surrounding area (mind you, it seems as though all the towns are built on a hill with amazing views everywhere, and actually, I believe that this was for protection...).
We walked through it in about twenty minutes, and didn't see more than one other person along the way.

Montepulciano was next, where we would spend the remainder of the day and evening. Not a very big town, but bigger than the rest, many of our group had more than enough shops to choose from to sate their ravenous shopping appetites. A leather shop called Maledetti Toscani, which roughly translates to "Damn Tuscans" and has been around since 1848, did very well by my family that day.

We've got a 15% per cent discount there now for life. Effin rights. We also went into a very nice copper shop where the husband of the old couple that ran it was trying to sell us some cookware and essentially told us that Myra should really have this giant copper pan so she would have something decent to pop me one on the old crust of bread with. After grabbing a quick bite to eat, we retreated into the warmth our little coach and home to another night of complete darkness and sound sleep.

Tuesday my Dad had hooked up a lunch for us at a newer winery, as he knows the daughter of the guy who owns it.

Nice place, nice food, and, so I'm told, nice wine. I can't tell the difference. The thing that blew me away was the brochure's that they set us up with. These things are like high quality coffee-table books, with really nice production and clearly cost a fortune to produce, and they're giving them away like... brochures. Crazy.

The next day we took the train in to Florence, or Firenze, but first, Myra and my Dad and I got up early (6am, on a holiday!) and walked into Cortona to the local hangout for a coffee and some pastries.

Delicious, and it was a nice clear morning, like the rest had been. We did and saw a lot, so I'll keep it basic. We saw a bunch of really important churches, the highlight of which was the Duomo (the 926 stairs

of which I climbed for the view). We saw a lot of really important, really big statues, like David and some by Donatello. Some people got some really important shopping done at some really important stores. It was a momentous day.

The weather was perfect, and we had some more good food at a not very important restaurant, and had a little adventure with the train ride home (upon re-reading this, it's not really that exciting, but we found it funny at the time...):

Part of it went like this: The train we were supposed to get on (which happened to be the last one of the night) switched tracks last minute and we didn't quite catch the update. The train we got on, which we thought was the right one, left on time, however, so we were ok, but was much nicer than the one we paid for. Oh well, we could live with that. The first compartment in the car was not occupied, so the five of us made ourselves comfortable. Myra had left us earlier in the day as she had to return to Reading to teach her class. Bummer. Anyway, about ten or fifteen minutes pass and all these rail police or officials or whatever you want to call them, kept giving us looks as they walked past the compartment. After enough of them passed, my dad goes out and sees the sign on the door, right in plain view, that says something obvious, in English, like "this compartment is for rail police only". We felt like a right bunch of muppets. Typical tourists. No problem, we moved to the next available compartment and met Pino at the station to take us back to our little villa.

Ok, Thursday. I really have no idea what we did on Thursday. Ooh, right. The day is forgotten, but we had dinner at what is apparently one of the top restaurants in Europe. On the other side of Cortona, nestled in the hills (like everything else), was a fairly unassuming building. The staff had the long coat tails and the whole lot, which matched their service, which was impeccable. The food came in the little tiny portions, stacked very neatly and tasting like it was the reason why taste buds were invented.

Friday we had our olives pressed and we would be tasting it later that night, with our final meal with chef Luca, which is about all I can remember about Friday. Did you know I'm getting grey hair?

I can't pass this up. Try as I might, I can't find an explanation for this one, so I've decided that God gave this numbskull another brake. On the night we came home on the train from Firenze, I came back into my room and emptied all my pockets on the nicely made bed, as the routine went. I had everything except my phone. It came free with my phone plan, but to replace it would be about £300 to £400. That's pounds. So I look everywhere about six times over, went outside and looked around the mini-bus, inside the mini-bus, and everywhere else I could think of. At one point on the train I had my phone on my lap, which even then I thought was a bad idea, but was otherwise occupied. I thought I must have forgot about it and when I stood up to leave, perhaps it dropped and is still on that train. Somewhere. Eventually I resigned to the fact that it was gone and started thinking about whether or not I could claim in on travel insurance, and went to sleep.

The next morning I get up, have a shower, and when I came back to the bed and flung the covers back to make the bed, there, in the middle of the bed, staring me in the face, was my phone. I'm still baffled, because the bed was totally smooth and made when I emptied my pockets onto it the night before, and there wasn't much to sift through in the fist place. There you have it.

Alright. That wraps it up. I'll attempt to have a Christmas update ready before spring rolls around.