Italy-Croatia 2019

This week, I plan to return to Italy, this time to lead a 15-day tour to Umbria and on to Croatia, Montenegro and Slovenia.  It will be my 10th time in Italy and seventh time in Rome. Two other times I flew into Milan and once to Venice.

https://youtu.be/JrqhRMUXP3s

We arrived in Rome a couple of days ahead of the start of our Italy-Croatia Tour and checked into the elegant Grand Hotel Palace on the Via Veneto, a street famous for the film La Dolce Vita. This location is ideal with easy access to the Borghese gardens and a short walk down to Piazza Barberini and...

Monday morning we went to the Vatican to see the Pope’s garden, which covers about 60 acres. It is located behind the Vatican buildings which means you get a very good close up view of St. Peter's dome from the garden from a different angle. St Peter's from the Vatican garden

To the sound of Claudio Villa singing Arrivederci Roma, we left the Eternal City in our maroon coloured coach and headed north to Umbria. Villa Lante guide Iza with frescos But first, we stopped on our way to visit the famous garden at Villa Lante in Bagnaia just...

In Perugia, we had no idea that to reach the town centre we would have to take a series of escalators. The town is at the top of a steep hill and our hotel was well located but not in the centre of town. Seeing the Giotto frescos in Assisi

Sunday we crossed the border into Montenegro to visit Perast where we took a boat to see the church of the Lady on the Rocks island. Pauline Maughan in Perast From there, we moved further along the picturesque fiord to the town of Kotor where we had lunch...

It took just about 90 minutes to get there out of Split, but the time passed very quickly as the scenery on the way is quite nice.  Krka National Park, outside Split, Croatia Once inside the park, we started to walk along the wooden planks of a ...