In the past I’d never had a burning desire to see Venice, having heard it called Disneyland and a shopping mall with a river running through it. But once my sister and I booked a cruise to the Greek Islands which started in Venice, we decided to add another night and day to (what should […]
Read MoreCategory: Places to go
Florence and Fiesole, parte due
This post will be an extension of my Florence and Fiesole post as well as my Flying Solo and Attitude is Everything posts. If anyone out there read the latter posts, they know that when I published them, I was getting ready to head to Florence to take a two week course in Italian. I took […]
Read MoreFive Days in Verona and Padua
I started this post while I was still in Verona but got sidetracked leaving for Venice and then the Greek Islands. Verona (and the Veneto) has a different ambiance (for lack of a better word) than other towns and cities I’ve visited in Italy and not at all what I expected. After reading the section […]
Read MoreThe Greek Islands and the Dalmatian Coast
Before I get to the topic of this blog, I have to write a short discourse on ‘cruising.’ My sister had wanted to go to the Greek Islands forever and the only logical way seemed to be on a cruise. While she had been on a Caribbean cruise, I had never cruised and had no […]
Read MoreOstuni and the Puglia
This post will overlap somewhat with my Flying Solo post since my experience in this area came through a volunteer trip helping teach English in Ostuni. According to the travel guides, summer in the Puglia region of southern Italy is hot and dry which may account for the fact that there seem to be fewer […]
Read MoreRome
This will be a fairly short article, at least for me. In 2016 my sister and I took a walking tour of Tuscany (see Thoughts on choosing a tour group, airline or place to stay, Montecatini Terme and Siena to St. Gimignano posts,) that covered a number of towns from Montecatini Terme, to Siena and Cortona. Our walking tour […]
Read MoreThe Towns of Chianti
Florence and Fiesole as well as Siena and San Gimignano are the topics of separate posts (see Florence and Fiesole, and Siena to St. Gimignano) This article will be about the smaller towns of Chianti that I’ve come to love. On my first bike trip to Italy (with Backroads) we started at the outskirts of Florence […]
Read MoreSiena to St. Gimignano
Between Siena and San Gimignano Usually the centerpiece of any article about Siena is the incredible Duomo; however I’ve included a discussion of it in my Cathedrals and Abbeys post and will focus on a theme similar to the one I used for Florence/Firenze–walking and people watching. I saw Siena for the first time on […]
Read MoreFlorence and Fiesole
It’s difficult to know where to start when writing about Florence (Firenze) and Fiesole. I fell in love with the city the first time I came, following a bike trip, and have returned 10 times since then. One of my favorite memories from that trip was walking down a narrow street from my hotel on […]
Read MoreMontalcino and Southern Tuscany
I first saw Montalcino from the seat of a bike grinding up the switchbacks from the valley below, on the road from Buonconvento. I don’t know about the rest of our group but I was sweating and dying. But when we got to the town and sat in a little park or open space along […]
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