Ciao, Italia

We’re back, though none too happily. Italy was beautiful, delicious, exhilarating, exhausting and more! We ate the most amazing food, saw breathtaking art, met really wonderful people (both on and off the tour!) and had a world class Italian workout!
We were on the Rick Steves’ Heart of Italy in 11 Days Tour, and we more than received our money’s worth. I sincerely doubt that it would have been possible to fit any more into our time there. In fact, I think the tour would be more accurately called the Heart, Stomach and Soul of ItaIy Tour. We had quite the workout, and I must say I came home in better shape than I left, in spite of my daily ingestions of pasta, wine, and gelato!
Our guide, the lovely, personable, and knowledgeable Karin Kibby, knew just how to manage our times together and apart, and sensed when we needed a gelato break and when she could push us to travel that extra mile to see the next basilica or duomo. The amazing sights we were seeing totally overrode our fatigue and we lived each day to the fullest.
And considering that each night’s meal was accompanied by some of the most amazing wine on the planet, who were we to complain?
Though I admit that I did have my doubts going in, the Rick Steves’ tour was a great way to go to a new country. It is like traveling with a really knowledgeable friend who’s already scoped out all the best places to eat, sleep, and shop, and all you have to do is go along for the ride and try to keep up! There is no way that the average person could have seen and done as much as we did without spending a lot more time and doing a lot more research than I personally have time to do.
A great part of the tour was meeting and bonding with our traveling buddies. We were all in this together, and everyone on the tour felt like family within a few days.
After a brief meeting in our hotel in Florence, Karin led us to the Accademia Museum where we visited Michelangelo’s David. It was breathtaking, and, I’m not going to lie, it gave me chills. From there we walked to the Baptistry and Bruneschelli’s Dome.
We were all fairly jet-lagged by this point, so after a moment to freshen up, we went to enjoy our first Italian pasta, which included the world’s most delectable gnocchi.
We wandered back to our hotel, yours truly leading a few of us on a totally wild goose chase, but with a mid-course correction by Tabitha, who was to become our Fearless Leader in foreign lands, we were quickly back at our little hotel and tossing and turning in our little beds. We had an early call the next morning at the Uffizi gallery, and, of course, there was always the chance that we might sniff out some Italian leather!

We're Backl!!!

Italy was the bomb! WE had the best, most exhausting time you can imagine! We're still trying to recover and sort it all out, but it was wonderfully delicious, beautiful and inspiring! Here's some pics to tide you over till I get my pencils sharpened!

Packing It In Part Deux

As you can see, my husband is done with his packing already. Mine is more of a work in progress. But fear not, gentle readers, I will be packed soon.

Packing It In

We are readying ourselves for a journey to Italy, the land of romance that I have oft dreamed of visiting.
We are on a tour not of our own making, as has been our experience as we have traveled with our extended family for the past two years, but with a Rick Steves tour. Rick Steves, he of the PBS series, is a believer in the “close to the ground” type of tour, wherein you live as a temporary European. His “Europe by the Back Door” philosophy seeks to help travelers experience new lands like locals. To accomplish this, he avoids the big chain hotels and restaurants and seeks out charming places run by the people who own them.
Our journey will begin in Florence and go from there to Lucca, then on to Cinque Terre, off Siena, Assisi, Umbria and finally, Rome. We will be trekking through Italy for eleven days.
And here’s the catch—(you knew there had to be a catch, didn’t you?)—we are each only allowed to bring one suitcase and it has to be of the “carry-on” variety. That is to say, it must be 22”x 14” x 9”. That means that everything I am going to need for eleven days has to fit into 2,772 cubic inches of space. I totally plan on bringing along a fold-up bag that will double as a second suitcase to bring home goodies, but seriously, people! This is going to be a challenge!
They send you a suggested packing list, but of course, one must fine tune it. I am trying to figure out which of my clothes will be able to be washed out and will dry in a reasonable amount of time for recycling purposes. I remember when my daughter Li z and I went to Paris in August, and it was 104 degrees. I ended up washing out my khaki skirt every night and wearing it every day. This trip may prove similar. The weather in Italy has been sunny and very warm lately.
Of primary concern to me is finding the right shoes to wear for the miles of walking that we are promised. In fact, Rick Steves’ literature warns that this is a strenuous trip, so I hope I can keep up. I plan on taking my most broken-in sandals and a pair of sneakers. Maybe I should pack roller skates!
I also purchased a new camera, since my last one was donated to the employees of Hertz rental cars in Tampa. “No, Mrs. Werner, no one found a camera in that car you returned.” Now I just need to get a few lessons on how to operate it once we get there. I won’t have my usual tech team on hand to help me in Italy.
Everyone who has been there has told us how much they loved Italy. The food! The wine! The beautiful countryside! The marvelous cities!
I am totally psyched about going. All I have to do is fit my worldly goods into a very small space.
Wish me luck.

Too Much Information!

“The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

Except that now, in the age of the Internet and the limitless access to information that it provides, the “number of things” that the world is so full of seems a tad overwhelming.

I am a little interested in a whole bunch of things. I took one of those personality /career tests that compared me to a little puppy dog, sticking my nose in lots of places, and then scampering off to find something new. I couldn’t deny it—I find many things fascinating. I probably have a touch of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), which is actually a misnomer, since I don’t have a deficit of attention—I have loads of it, I just can’t keep it focused on one thing at a time. Too boring. I am a born multi-tasker. The only problem with that is that my attention keeps getting drawn to something new every few seconds.

Hey, look—there’s a squirrel!

Anyway, I was the kid who, back in the day, read the encyclopedias that Mom bought down at the grocery store from cover to cover. They were filled with interesting information, and coupled with my insatiable desire to read, they were perfect for me. Who wouldn’t want to know everything about Ben Franklin, franking privileges, and Anne Frank, all in the same half hour?

It also explains why I love newspapers so much. In one sitting, I can read the day’s news, some nifty op-ed columns, and a book or movie review. Breakfast for me is a large cup of coffee and large helping of information, please. I used to read cereal boxes, for goodness sake! Remember the news from Checkerboard Square?

But my unending desire to read and find out new and interesting stuff has met its Waterloo in the Internet. Its stores of information—factual and otherwise—are infinite, and therein lies the rub. The internet is like those encyclopedias I was so fond of, times a billion. There’s no “Z”! I could never get to the end of the information available on the web. It is simply not possible.

And for someone like me, who likes to sniff, sniff, sniff, and then dig, dig, dig, like a little puppy, there are just too many interesting tangents for me to explore, making it impossible to get from A to B in any kind of linear fashion. My little piles of links are stacked up in the bottom of my toolbar, looking up at me and wondering what I am going to do with them. Sorry, I can’t bookmark you all, little links. Some of you are just going to have to go back into the ether. Now, what was I looking for again?

I know I am not alone in this. I have suspicions that there are lots of us not just surfing the Web, but drowning in its riptides of data and fascinating facts. It’s hard to keep your eyes on the prize when there are so many other shiny things to look at along the way.

So, with apologies to R.L.S., I’d like to update his verse:

The Web is so filled with a number of sites, I can’t see them all—try as I might.

It’s so fast and vast in what it can show, that it’s swamped my poor brain with its raw data flow.

While access to info should make me feel royal, to the printed word I shall always be loyal.