Road Trippin' With the Kluenkers

Katie's parents rented a car and after some good days walking the streets of Rome, we were faced with the situation of driving out of the Eternal city. Our plan was simple, head north toward France for a few days with some friends of the family. An interesting note here is the significant difference between maps and reality. If one is to look at a map of Italy, they will notice there is a "ring road" circling the city, so it stands to simple reason that if you could drive in any one direction long enough, you could reach this "ring road" then find the correct freeway and so on. Well, driving in one constant direction in Rome is like trying to order a diet conscious meal at McDonald's--idealistic at best. However, with four sets of eyes looking and some back tracking we made it out of the city unscathed.

We decided to pass through Florence on the way for a few hours and after a mild but interesting parking search we managed to visit Florence's most well known sight: The Duomo. I don't think we were quite prepared for how beautiful it was:
The white and green marble exterior was a nice touch as well as the mosiac above the main entrance:
As was the famous gold door:
Next we walked on toward an open air market surrounding another cathedral.
After a brief gelato break we hopped in the car and made our way up the coast of Italy. A few hourse later we came to a stop for the night in the small town of Camogli. Since we went to Cinque Terre two weeks before, we were expecting something similar. To our suprise, what we found was a much sleepier, rustic, and quieter experience that we fell in love with almost as soon as we parked the car.
The next morning, we enjoyed our last cups of Italian coffee and made our way north into Southern France. We planned to spend an hour or two in Monaco's Monte Carlo, but due to rain and serious traffic, we saw it from the car.

Later that day we arrived at a family friend's house in southern France.