We took the train from Rome to Florence. I wish we had trains like this at home – so easy and cheap. We could jump on a train to Minneapolis and sleep the whole way there!
We are staying at a farmhouse in Tuscany. It’s an old hunting lodge at the top of a winding road in the Mugello valley. We slept with the windows open and could hear cowbells and roosters crowing.
We went to the MotoGP race on Saturday and Sunday. Everything I’d read about the track said it was on a country road in the middle of nowhere. That couldn’t have been more true – it smelled like the Iowa State Fair off of Dean Avenue. The track is in the middle of nowhere. It’s been raining, so there is mud everywhere. If we would have known, we could have brought some boots. The atmosphere at the track is so much fun. It’s kind of like the Iowa State Fair – people camping everywhere, vendors selling beer and sausage, and crazy drunk people standing under tents. We have waded through over 200,000 people, corn fields, and streams just to get to the track!
We went to Bologna to tour the Ducati factory. Bologna was interesting, to say the least. At least the part that we saw. It was like the Merle Hay auto mile of whores. Young, old, skinny, chubby – anything you could possibly want. The factory was amazing – we saw the bikes being assembled by hand. We also went to the Ferrari Museum in Maranello. They didn’t have ropes or barriers around the cars – you could just walk right up.
Casa Verragoli, our farmhouse in Tuscany
The hills in Tuscany
Ferrari factory in Maranello