This website was about voyages on various boats and then a plane owned by John and Laura Lee Samford of Birmingham, Alabama. The last boat and plane have been sold, so the blog has turned to other travels and comments on life events. It also contains other blather user-generated content. Check out what you like and ignore the rest. Thanks for stopping by.
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Monday, May 25, 2015 at 02:11AM Having never been to Venice, the last few days have been rather astonishing. My first impression was to wonder how or why anyone ever built an astonishing and beautiful city in such a difficult location. We rented a car in Florence and used it to visit Vicenza and later to get us to the Venice airport.
Check out this video on how Venice really works.
Sunday, May 17, 2015 at 11:18AM 
We are staying in a rented apartment in the middle of the ancient town of Vicenza, where we are on something of a pilgrimage for Laura Lee to see the architecture of Andrea Palladio. He designed a vast number of buildings built here in the 16th century. Our view of his work is up close and personal as the view from our window (to the right) is the Basilica Palladiana, designed from 1546 to 1549, his first public commission.
Laura Lee walked to two of his nearby villas yesterday, we drove out to one about 30 miles away this morning, and she visited “Palazzo Chiericati” and a theater, the “Teatro Olimpico”, this afternoon in town. I will refrain from showing my lack of architectural knowledge by further comment, but suffice it to say she is in heaven. Below this entry is the Lovely Laura Lee photographing the ceiling of the villa we visited this morning.
Meanwhile, I am checking out the town, the pasta, the wine, the Gelato, etc., and growing accustomed to the idea of an afternoon siesta, all as part of my recovery from the bicycle trip we completed Thursday afternoon. You can see the entries for each day of biking below, but nothing was written because we had little time, and we were exhausted at the end of each day. Adding up the numbers for five days on a bicycle in Tuscany, here are the statistics:
