Life at 247-1

It started at 11am on Friday morning when we left our house in Fukuoka and headed for the airport for our afternoon flight to Tokyo. With one big suitcase for me and the 3 kids, a baby pusher and a backpack each we had our hands full.

Today we packed our bags and flew to Tokyo to spend the New Year at grandparents place.

I took the boys for a morning walk around Siena before getting on the bus back to Florence and then transferring to the train from Florence to Milan and then to Turin. It was going to be a long day.

The walkway up to our hotel.

A short walk through the streets of Siena...

An early morning view of the streets around Florence's Duomo.

Having made an advanced reservation for the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, one of the world's most important museums and one of the first in Europe to emerge in accordance with the modern idea of a museum, that is having organized exhibition space designed for public viewing, we were able to get in without the long wait in a queue.

Inside the Refectory of the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie on one side of the wall lies the famous 'Last Supper' or 'Cenacolo' of Leonardo da Vinci. We arrived at the reservation office at 9am, half an hour before our reservation time. Everything went smoothly and we got our tickets with no hassle.

I had managed to get a reservation for us to see Leonardo Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' in Milan. So just prior to our Florence and Siena trip we were spending the night in Milan. On the train ride down from Torino the boys busied themselves with their colouring books.

For their last free day in Italy we took the grandparents to one of our favourite places, Briancon in France. It had been over 6 months since the last time we visited and we totally enjoyed the medieval town. Plus, the crepes were great too and something we had always wanted to have again.

From Punta Helbronner onwards to Aiguille du Midi, the Italian cable car ends and we change to the French Mont Blanc gondola, of course we need to buy tickets again for this ride which takes us through the heart of the Mont Blanc massif, roughly a 5km ride.