At last! Friday 5.00 has arrived and I am free for two whole days. And, for once, I do not have any work function to go to. Sigh - how to fill the time? Well, when one’s home city is hosting Le Grand Depart of Le Tour de France, one heads to Trafalgar Square to watch the opening ceremonies. Believe it or not, in all the time I have lived in London, I have never been to an event in Trafalgar Square. In fact, I tend to avoid them like the plague as they always seem as though they will [View Full Entry]

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After remaining a bachelor for over forty years, my cousin John decided to marry his girlfriend on their farm in Pennsylvania. I could not miss this, so off I went for the weekend. It always seems like such a good idea at the time, but the resulting jet lag is a bit much. This time, however, it was well worth it. The ceremony was great, made even more so by the fact that my brother officiated. I’m always so proud of him when I see him preach - he is a real natural. He made the ceremony really fun and personal. [View Full Entry]

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One of the reasons Mom and Lynn came to London was to go to the Chelsea Flower Show. It is, rightly, listed in the 1000 Places to See Before You Die. There is nothing quite like it. It is a profusion of colour and scent, and it makes even someone with a black thumb (like me!) want to garden. On the day, I took 205 photos. I won’t bore you with all of them, but I have picked out the ones I like the best. They will show you better than I could tell you how wonderful an experience this was. [View Full Entry]

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With a sad heart, we said goodbye to Proceno this morning and headed to the Rome airport to catch a flight to London. The good news was that I didn’t have to say goodbye to Mom and Lynn quite yet. We had decided that we wanted to do one more stop before we got on the plane, so we stopped about halfway to Rome at Tarquinia. This is a spot famous for its Etruscan burial grounds and it is a great place to wander around. We started with a picnic in which we finished off everything that we had bought during [View Full Entry]

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Oh no! Our last full day in Italy. How to decide what to visit, but more importantly, we had to make sure that we had our final tastes of all the good Italian food. Luckily, because this is Italy, we were pretty sure to land on our feet no matter what we did. And, oh boy, did we land on our feet. We decided to drive out to Orvieto through the Umbrian countryside. Absolutely stunning and, what amazed me, really different from Tuscany. One would think because they are so close together that they would be more or less the same. [View Full Entry]

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At last the day had arrived. Mom and Lynn were very keen for me to come during this time because of a local festival called I Pugnaloni. They had been talking about it for years and I was always intrigued, but figured that if I never saw it, my life would not noticeably change. Once again, I was proven wrong. This ended up being the highlight day of the trip and something I will simply never forget. Acquapendente is one town over from Proceno. Every year, they hold the Festa della Madonna del Fiore - or the Festival of the Madonna [View Full Entry]

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How does one top climbing a mountain and having a picnic in the sun? Tricky, I know. After a bit of discussion over the usual morning coffee, we settled on Montepulciano. Two friends of Lynn’s called Tina and Wayne were staying at the castle with us, so they came along on this adventure. My very important job as we drove over to the town was to find the lunch spot. This is a responsibility that I did not take lightly, so with reference to the Michelin guidebook and a long discussion with Lynn, we decided on a place called La Grotta [View Full Entry]

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THIS IS THE ONE WHERE THE TEXT WAS LOST BUT THE PHOTOS WERE RECOVERED. [View Full Entry]

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So - after having a concert put on in one’s honour and sleeping in a castle, how does one fill the rest of the time in Italy? We managed just fine by driving around Tuscany and Umbria and eating until our little hearts were content. Our days followed a wonderful pattern. I would get up early and do the BlackBerry thing (yes, I know, sad but one has to work for a living - even in Italy). Mom and Lynn would then get up and Mom would make some of that wonderful Italian coffee while we discussed lunch and dinner (the [View Full Entry]

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Every year, Mom and Lynn spend several weeks in Italy in a castle above a small hill town called Proceno. I had heard magnificent things about it, and finally had the opportunity to go see for myself. Regardless of the fact that I was just back from my two weeks in the states, I was really excited about another ten days off as well as being able to spend a lot of time with Mom and Lynn. I was on the first flight to Rome, which meant I had to be up at 4:00 as the taxi was picking me up [View Full Entry]

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