When traveling alone, I used to get very early starts–eager to pound the pavement and take in the sights. I remember buzzing around Tokyo for a solid 10 hours. Perhaps it’s age or just my deteriorating stamina, but I find it increasingly harder to do a full 8 or 9 hours of walking around, particularly alone. It also doesn’t help that Italians eat fairly late, starting around 8 pm–ironically, that isn’t actually late for me, as David and I usually eat around then, but it means you’ve got a fair bit of time until dinner. So I’ve taken to more leisurely starts, lounging until mid-morning, that way I’m not completely knackered by the time dinner rolls around. I had a few things on my list of things to see today, including the Galleria dell’Accademia, best known for housing the statue of David.

Florence is apparently a walking city, as most of the highlights are concentrated in a relatively small area. I started my journey walking through the Piazza Santo Spirito, which was just a few blocks from the apartment, which my host recommended as a good place to find restaurants. As the place is located in the Oltrarno area, across the Arno river, I crossed one of Florence's many bridges and took in a splendid view of the city and of Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge lined with shops perched on stilts.

Our only major plans for the day were to visit the Galleria Borghese and the surrounding park area. We made our way to catch the metro and managed to catch a train just as it was leaving. It was a bit bizarre getting on, as there were a group of people standing right in the doorway that didn’t move at all, so we had to push our way in. At first, we thought it was just rudeness but continued commotion revealed that there may have just been an attempted pickpocketing.

This was to be the day for all things holy, as we were to be visiting Vatican City, the seat of Roman Catholic power. As such, we were sure to dress appropriately, with dresses of modest length and cardigans to cover our shoulders in the basilica. Vatican City was a relatively easy metro ride from our stop–a mere 15 minutes–and it wasn’t long before we were walking towards the wall of the tiniest state in the world. It was pretty much a perceptual onslaught of tour requests, so I was getting the sense that it was going to be a well-touristed day.

After the whirlwind set of sights we had yesterday, we planned a relatively smaller itinerary, though only in the size of the list. One big ticket item was on it: the Colosseum. As our apartment is located in relative walking distance to the site, we decided it might be nice to walk over. Our host had recommended we check out a church on the walk, and so we planned our route accordingly.

Despite staying up late planning our Rome itinerary, Angela and I both ended up waking up 15 minutes before our alarms went off. We got ourselves ready to go and had a quick bite of some breakfast-type food that our host had kindly provided. We made our way to the nearby Metro station, which was remarkably straightforward to use. It was only a few stops away, so it wasn’t long before we emerged at the Piazza de Spagna. It was literally just around the corner and we were standing at the base of the Spanish Steps.

It was our last day in France, so we tried to get going in a timely manner. We dressed and primped and packed our things up and checked out of our hotel. We had an evening flight to Rome, which meant we had the day to do a bit more exploring and some shopping around the city. We headed in the direction of the Notre Dame de la Garde, the basilica atop the large hill that overlooks the city. Upon looking at it this morning, we were somewhat apprehensive about making the climb, but set off up the hill.

We were able to get out the door at a decent hour, as we had exciting sightseeing plans for the day. We planned to catch a ferry to visit Chateau d’If and the nearby island (Ile de Frouil). We packed ourselves a tote with beach goods, as the island was purported to have some beaches. We grabbed pastries from our now usual boulangerie around the corner and headed to a wine and goods shop. We took a stroll what turned out to be a pleasant little neighborhood, with cute little shops, most of which had opened yet and passing a massive, gorgeous striped church.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I woke up relatively early and was able to take my time getting ready for the day. We decided to skip the first session of the conference, as we were both presenting later in the day and wanted to be rested and refreshed. We meandered out to a little boulangerie around the corner to grab some morning pastries and sat out at a table to enjoy them (and the people-watching). We decided to take a very round-about route to the conference site in order to explore the area a little bit. We wandered the shaded streets, past little discount clothing and shoe shops until we came across a beautiful set of steps leading up to the train station.

It was a beautiful morning plane ride over Marseille, and it wasn’t long before we were off the plane and I happily collected my luggage (pleased/relieved that it made it through both my connections). I grabbed a ticket for a shuttle bus into town and was soon on my way to Marseille’s central train station. It was surprisingly hot for so early in the morning (28 C at about 9:30 am). In the interest of not being a sweaty mess and getting to the conference in a timely manner, I decided to grab a cab to the hotel. A somewhat regrettable choice as the cabbie informed me in somewhat broken English something about minimum distances/fares which resulted in my paying 20 Euro for a 10 minute cab ride. Ah well, nothing like a likely unscrupulous cab driver to start things off!

It was a beautiful sunny day to cap off the end of my time in Scandinavia. I wanted to see if, by any small miracle, the cake shop (Conditori La Glace) was open, so we walked over to Strøget. Unfortunately, it was closed, perhaps unsurprisingly, given that it was Easter Sunday. As the wifi wasn’t working at our hotel again, we picked up some pastries and coffee at a nearby café that I knew to have wifi to get in our morning fix of the interwebs.

We were delighted to discover wifi had been restored at some point during the night, and so I hurriedly searched the internet and finalized our meal plans for the day (in case we lost it again). Continuing our coffee tour of Scandinavia, we set out to visit Coffee Collective, a local Copenhagen roastery, in glorious sunshine. We walked up to the Christianshavn metro station, which was two escalators deep underground, and popped over two stops. We emerged and attempted to get our bearings, stumbling across what looked to be a glass-encased food market.