Home Again

As much as I enjoy travelling, there is something to be said for coming home to four friendly little felines and your own bed.  Alas, only Katrina will actually sleep with me and even that is usually sporadic, but last night, my first night home, she stayed close by my side all night.  I like to think that means she missed me.  I know I missed having all four of them about.  As nice as the two apartments were that I rented, in Rome and Florence, I kept feeling like something was missing in each of them:  there was no cat to welcome me home at the end of each day or to keep me company while I was there.

Of course, there is also more practical side of the reality of being home again to deal with, once a trip is over.  Things like going back to work, sorting through an inbox full of emails, grocery shopping to fill an empty fridge, litter boxes to be emptied, laundry to be done.  Not to mention, photos to be downloaded!  I took about 2,400 pictures in total - approximately 500 in Rome, 1000 in Fabriano and 850 in Florence.  Now they all needed to be sorted, edited and/or deleted.  Which I am quite looking forward to, as it happens, since I will now have the pleasure of looking at all of them on a bigger screen with better resolution.  As I work my way through the photos, I'll be sharing them here along with the stories that go with them, so stay tuned.

While I was away, I was also tracking my travels by way of a Fitbit, a little device that clips onto your bra or the waistband of your pants to keep count of your steps (I picked one up in January when I was in Seattle, thanks to Teesha Moore).  I wasn't able to download the information daily while I was away so I only have about 15 full days worth of data - it stopped counting after that, presumably because the memory was filled by that point, so I don't have stats for the last day and a half of my trip but that's okay, since I spent most of the last day sitting on trains and a plane anyway. It was still interesting to discover that I walked approximately 199,000 steps in total over that time, with the highest day's count being 19,114! 

Whew, it makes me tired just thinking about being that active right now! Probably because as I write this, it's going on 3 in the morning in Italy.  If I was still there, I'd be sound asleep right now!  No wonder I'm tired. 

For now, I'll leave you with this photo I took of the Santa Trinita bridge in Florence on my last night there: