Italian three course meal

Our (unoriginal) route.  Source: Rick Steves website

In two short weeks, Steven and I will celebrate our 25th anniversary in Italy.  Our last expedition without the kids was a 15th anniversary visit to Amsterdam.  But the kids were smaller then, and our youngest is just shy of 18 now.  We will depart unfettered.

I bought a thick travel book on Italy some months ago and found that I wanted to visit every small footprint of land in Italy.  I think that was a combination of the excellence of the guidebook and the richness of the country that is Italy.  It was tough but we finally settled on the "grand tour" of Italy, which consists of its three most visited cities: Rome, Florence and Venice.  We now have several guidebooks on Italy, but I am discovering my favorite is the recent Moon book (published April 2017) called, appropriately enough, Rome, Florence &Venice by Alexei J. Cohen.  Cohen, an American, now lives on the outskirts of Rome with his Italian wife, and writes with tight but beautiful precision about the three cities.