Did you think I’d make you go cold turkey on the travelogues? I thought it might help the transition if I posted once more and shared a few things.

The trip home took some time, but the family was back in a rainy Maryland before dinner last night. Now Nora’s reacquainting herself with the dogs and the garden and putting away all those Christmas gifts. [Insert a procrastinator’s eye roll here.]

When you deal with photos without the experience, creating these posts can take a great deal of care. Usually I’d review the day’s worth of photos everyone uploaded to the shared Google account and pick what I thought would work. Put my choices in a draft blog post and then see what matched Nora’s copy, which would arrive overnight. Occasionally I’d send specific requests (like, Where the heck is the rosemary plant you went on about?? or Where’s a photo of the second puzzle?), but mainly it was going on instinct.

Finalizing the post was the first task of my day, which is why so many of you have sipped your morning drink and read the blog during this trip. Last year’ Montana posts were more cocktail hour ones.

Occasionally a photo would show up after I’d posted the blog.

Like this lovely one of Kayla and BW on the first night in Florence.

Or this lovely night shot from Jason.

Speaking of Florence, here’s BW’s video tour of the flat.

On occasion, I’d live up to the Cranky Publicist name and complain about not having details I couldn’t look up. Or would outright say no on a visual pun. More often the real issues were tech ones when WordPress didn’t like a photo format — especially from iPhones or iPads. In those cases, Jason — along with BW, another Android fan — would filter the photos through to me. Fortunately, we quickly figured out the work around and he didn’t have to do double duty for more than 3 weeks.

The work around for the panos — a family favorite — was a direct text to me.

On other occasions I’d have four photos of the same thing. In the case below, everyone liked this butt when they visited Pitti Palace. This is Kat’s version.

And there were several carousel photos, loved this for the action. Photo by Jason

As the goal was to have the photos to flow with Nora’s recaps, sometimes I couldn’t use the random photos everyone sent. I think you saw all of Kayla’s signs, but there was a lot of fabulous street art Kat captured in Florence.

Or the quirky things Kayla and BW noticed in Gimignano.

And I could have just done the flowers in Tuscany for days.

Plus tons of Griffin.

One of the games in action.

And the cloud, horizon, evening, daytime landscape views were gorgeous.

But you can’t share everything. And all things do come to an end.

Nora and I found the accommodations through Via Villas and just scrolling through their website is almost a trip to Italy in and of itself.

Nora’s home for a couple weeks, then it’s time for Greenbrier. I’ll probably do the recaps for that one with Nora chiming in.

Thanks as always for coming along for the ride.

Laura