November 1, 2010 Monday travel day

Up on time and packed to leave our quaint, friendly B&B in the Tuscan countryside. We took one more look at the view of the countryside with the olive trees, from our vantage point on the hill. We were able to get a quick cappuccino and pastry before loading into the again very expensive taxi. I actually think we got ripped off by the taxi driver, but what are you going to do, stand there and argue with him in front of the train station.  I think not, so we paid the astronomical fee and headed to our train. We enjoyed some very good company on our first stretch of the trip from Florence to Milan. There was a mom and her son from Virginia traveling all through Europe together sitting right next to us. It was so good to hear and talk in a language I can understand with people whom we had so much in common. We talked about adventures, where we've been and where we still plan to go. It made that stretch of the trip fly by. We did see some flooding in Italy on this stretch. We heard that this was very unusual weather for them. Of course, during the few days we were there. We changed trains in Milan, which is a very neat train station.

We made our way through Italy, and Switzerland, which was again breathtaking. We treated ourselves to lunch in the train car that is set up as a restaurant and enjoyed the food and sights. Another full day of travel, but back to Strasbourg by around 5:00 pm, so Eric had time to chill before having to go back to work the next day.