As indicated earlier, we have many activities planned while we are in Abruzzo and staying in Chieti. However, this will be a leisurely time, with activities while walking around town to day trips up into the mountains. This last half of the trip will be busy (until we get back into Abruzzo mid-July, with train rides, a river cruise and the flight from Brussels back to Milan where Michele joins up with us. So here goes.

Jim and I will return our rental car on June 25th at the train station in Pescara, just a few miles closer to the coast from Chieti. We’ll then jump on the train and head up to Piacenza, halfway between Parma and Milan. We’ll talk more and add many photos while we are in town but here is one of the piazzas.

The train ride will take us up along the Adriatic Coast to Rimini where the tracks turn inland past the “Most Serene Republic of San Marino,” a sovereign country landlocked within Italy. We’ll then pass through Bologna, Modena and Parma before reaching Piacenza. Well, it is three hours to Bologna so we will likely stop off there and grab some lunch. We expect to arrive Piacenza mid-to-late afternoon.

e il appartamento. (Hope you are doing okay with the bits of Italian we include in our narratives.) We found some really nice apartments on this journey but we keep in mind that photos can be deceptive. We had only one of those kinds of letdowns on past trips but even then, the apartment was very livable.

We’ll move on to Basel the morning of June 28, a Tuesday. The train ride is nearly six hours but we’ve made it twice in the past as we had flown into Frankfurt, Germany on past trips, taken the train between Frankfurt and Milan a couple of times and we love trains, especially those passing alongside the Alps! By the time the end of June rolls around, we may have figured out a place to jump off the train for a couple of hours to grab lunch and look around.

In Basel, we found an apartment right near the train station and several blocks from the dock where we will board the boat for the river cruise. This apartment looks nice as well although it appears a tad bit smaller which is not entirely unexpected in northern Europe and downtown in an old city. I can’t get over some of the kitchens in these apartments though. Pretty modern.

Speaking of the boats, we caught three of them lined up on the river. And no, I do not think our boat has a putting green on the top deck!

We embark the M/S River Harmony on Saturday, July 2nd, but do not start the cruise until Monday, July 4th I might point out! Saturday afternoon is filled with an orientation of the boat, its features and safety procedures and a get acquainted with the captain and crew dinner that evening. We head back into Basel for a cruise company arranged tour of the town and it’s history and sights on the 3rd.

While we will not go into detail about each stop in this post, we’ll list the stops to provide a feel for how the cruise will proceed. We’ll post plenty of info, stories and pictures as we move along the river.

Day 4, July 4th and our push-off from Basel takes us to Strasbourg, France where we’ll be for two days. On Day 6, we’ll arrive Speyer, Germany followed by Boppard the next day. It’s Bernkastel on Friday, the 8th, and since there is a winery visit with wine tasting that day, we ought to have a nice Friday Happy Hour! As part of the cruise plan, we’ll peel off from the Rhine at this point and head down the Moselle River to Trier, Germany, on the 9th.

On the 10th, we’ll head into Luxembourg where we decided to take one of the optional tours. Our primary motivation to add this tour to our cruise plan is that it takes us among other places in Luxembourg, to the American Cemetery where Fran’s Uncle Russell is buried. He died right at the end for World War II.

After the tour, we’ll jump on a bus and head up to Bernkastel and the Rhine and rejoin the group aboard the boat. The boat will have left Luxembourg about the time those of us on the tour take off.

After we depart Bernkastel the second time, we’ll head up the Rhine towards Antwerp. Our first stop, Day 11 on the 11th, will be Cochem and then on to Bonn, Germany. Nijmegen in the Netherlands follows Bonn. The cruise line includes in its agenda, various locals who make presentations on a variety of history-related topics. At Nijmegen, it’ll be a talk on Operation Market Garden which took place in WW II and was supported quite admirably by the Dutch in this area.

Next stop will be Kinderdijk and Willemstad where we’ll take another side tour, this time of the Delta Works Flood Control project to see a restoration project known worldwide for its hydro-engineering, begun after flooding had devastated Holland. On Day 15, we’ll be at Antwerp where we will tour the town and finish up with the Captain’s Farewell Drink and Dinner. We disembark the next day, Saturday, the 16th, and head over to Brussels, Belgium.

We’ll be staying at the Easy Hotel in Brussels City Centre and will have time to explore the city. The room appears to be quite nice and will provide a good night’s sleep before we fly out the next day.

Sunday morning we fly out at 11:50, heading back to Milan, Italy. We have a nice apartment on one of the canals that lead into the center of the city. The location is great as is the little garden out the back door!

Our daughter arrives from Atlanta on Tuesday, the 19th. She has not been to Milan in the past so we’ll spend the next couple of days showing her around. While there is plenty to see and do in Milan, we also plan a train excursion up into the Alps. It’s a day trip which makes it so we don’t have to pack up and head out for a few days just to get up into the mountains.

We’ll leave Milano on the 24th and head down to Firenze, another great city with loads to see and do. We’ll likely sign up for an all day tour down to Siena and perhaps Torciano Winery. We spent an entire month in Florence back in 2016 (you can check the blog if you want a preview.) Our apartment in Florence is another winner and not unlike the last time we were there, located on one of those “cute” little streets or “Alleys!” It’s also very near the Ponte Vecchio with its many shops right on the bridge.

On July 28th, we’ll take the train down to Pescara which sits right on the Adriatic Sea. It’s a pretty modern town nowadays and again, close to friends and family. The apartment we found is about two blocks from the sea and close to the town center. We’ll be here over a week and for long stays, kitchens are important. This one has a six burner gas stove and double sink!

Michele will be with us so a couple of cooking classes are on the agenda. Then there will be at least one trip up to Fran’s maternal grandparents home town of Monteferrante.

We’ll leave Pescara and Abruzzo on August 7th and head by train up to Parma. We’ve a friend there, Alice, who is also a tour guide. She’ll be taking us to a parmesan cheese factory as well as a prosciutto factory. Michele will want to stay forever in Parma — she’s a cheese person. And yes, we will be bringing home Reggio Parmigiano although probably not a full wheel. And some balsamic aceto di Modena, Balsamic vinegar, thick and so wonderful one can top gelato with a little of it!

Back on the train Tuesday, the 9th, spend the night and then we climb on the airplane at Milan’s Malpensa Airport for the flight home Wednesday morning. A very nice journey if we do say so ourselves!

Be sure to stay with us on this blog for the next four months. You can expect our next entry to be from Catania, Sicily, or maybe from Rome since we have a five hour layover before flying down to Catania.

Ciao, ciao.