Details, details...

You know what you have to do after you decide on a destination?  That's right, you have to find a place to stay, a place that can accomodate 8 somewhat high maintenance women.  Do we want to rent a villa, stay in hotels, go backpacking and stay in hostels? Just kidding on the backpacking and hostels, that is so not going to happen...

So far our decision process of getting together to eat, drink, and talk has served us well. With that said, we all got together at Cheryl's, since she is sort of centrally located for everybody, plus she just has a great place to hang out.

Alright now, everyone get out their laptop, iPad, cell phone, whatever has internet access. We have some work to do!

We knew we wanted to stay in a villa while we were in Tuscany.  On the advice of others, we decided to check out Parker Villas.  Cheryl had already been doing some research and had some suggestions for us. We each went online and looked at those villas and a few others, just to be sure.  We made a list of the top 3 we would like to rent and when the villas finally became available for the 2014 season, Cheryl was all over it and we were able to get our first choice, Villa Santa Fina.  It has a great location and plenty of room for all of us.

5 bedrooms works out well for 8 women, especially since some of us, specifically me, do not like to have to share a room, much less a bed.  This place looks amazing, in addition to be centally located in Tuscany for us to drive to the various different places we want to go to while we are there.  There is an onsite restaraunt for us to take advantage of in addition to the option of bringing in someone to cook on the rare occassion that we are actually there for meals.  Otherwise, Bibby is all over making us eat healthy things to eat.

If you want to see more information on the villa, here is the link

http://www.parkervillas.com/italy/tuscany/villa-santa-fina/10?date=12014, otherwise here are a couple of pictures of the outside.

Now that we had Tuscany figured out, we needed to figure out where to stay in Rome. This time Joann was all over the research.  We decided and apartment was the best solution for Rome and Joann found us the perfect one.  The Elegante in Rome looks to be super posh, I'm sure I'll be afraid to touch anything, but am so looking forward to seeing it all.  We are only a five minute walk from the Piazza del Popolo and only a block away from the best shopping in Rome.  Plus there are many cafes and restarurants right outside our door.

Again if you would like to see more information on where we will be staying, here is the link:

http://www.italyperfect.com/rome-piazza-del-popolo-apartment/elegante.html, otherwise there are a few pics below.

So there you go, we are a couple more steps closer to having everything in place for this trip, I'd give you the rest of the details now, but where is the fun in that....

Caio!

So many places, so little time

We may have made the decision to go to Italy several years ago, but now we needed to decide where we specifically wanted to go in Italy.  So this past March we did what all really smart women do, get together to eat, drink, and talk.  The first of the "planning meetings" was to the local Benihana, we ate a lot of food, except for Bibby, and began the dialogue..

North, South, the middle, maybe an island like Sicily.  Good grief, how do we decide?!  I know, lets meet again for dinner and drinks!  And that is exactly what we did, we waited for the weather to be nice and in June, those who could, met at Lola's, a fun little lakeside restaurant.  There was more good food and drinks and even more talking.  Yes, we are really good at all three.

To be honest I don't really remember how we actually made the final decision of where we would visit within Italy.  But decide we did and now in just about 4 months, we are headed off to spend our first week in Tuscany followed up by a few days in Rome.

Caio!