Our week in Bergamo marked the start of the second half of our autumn 2025 trip, during which we planned to visit several cities in northern Lombardy to “try them on for size” as possible places to live when we move to Italy next year.
Here is a chronological index of all the posts from our six-week Road Scholar Independent Living and Learning in Florence trip to Italy in Spring 2025.
Richard, one of our fellow Road Scholars, assembled this beautiful 4:16 video summarizing our six weeks together in Florence. He showed it at our farewell lunch on Saturday, but was kind enough to send us all a copy to share. It’s a great recap of this fabulous trip.
A driver picked us, Georgia and Lori up from our respective apartments at 3:45 am, and we arrived at the airport half an hour later. We were all smiles in this photo, but we were half-asleep and sad to be leaving Florence.
On our last full day in Florence, we walked through the Giardino Boboli (Boboli Garden), one of the few places on our “must see” list that we hadn’t yet visited, and then bade farewell to our Road Scholar classmates and group leaders over yet another fabulous meal.
Today was the final day of language classes for three people from our Road Scholar group enrolled in the Classical Italian course (the others, in the Survival Italian course, had their last class the day before). We were all starting to pack up and prepare to head home, but we met together for dinner in the evening.
With just three days remaining, we were trying to cram in a few more experiences that we’d missed so far, including a walk through the Giardino Bardini. Then in the evening, our group all got dressed up to attend a symphony in the city’s beautiful modern concert hall.
We met up again with art historian and tour guide Emanuela for a walking tour focusing on the Italian Renaissance and featuring a visit to the Galleria dell’Accademia to see Michelangelo’s David.
We started our last week of language classes this morning, then had lunch with our RVing friends Peter and Theresé, who were in Florence for a few hours as part of a month-long tour of Italy. Then it was back to the school for a Road Scholar group meeting.
Today was a national holiday, so we didn’t have class. We slept in a bit, met up with friends for lunch, and then sought an escape from the heat in the Leonardo da Vinci Interactive Museum.