4th day -Tuesday We slept in until noon; apparently there is such a thing as too much wine and good food, but we are on vacation so no harm, no foul. We headed out to one of the local malls to shop for some essentials. It became readily apparent that the color purple was the new black of the season. Virtually every display window had their mannequins swathed in that color. Many of the locals could be seen wearing varying shades of purple. I didn’t find anything in purple that suited me and I couldn’t talk Sam into any purple pants or shirts. I figured that he could be a trendsetter back in Boise, but he was having none of that. We did stop by at Decathalon to look for a fleece layer for Beth. This ... read more

2nd day - Sunday We arrived in Rome slightly ahead of schedule. In fact Beth and I woke up from our sleep with only an hour remaining in our flight. Yep, you gotta love that. The only major stressor was that our friends' bags did not make it to Rome. Good luck prevailed and there was an extremely helpful individual (we think he was some kind of supervisor) that assisted Sam & Terri. The supervisor type guy pointed out a help desk for us to seek assistance. He came by after a few minutes to check out the situation. This was a good thing because when we arrived at the desk some poor guy was being lambasted by the woman behind the desk. He was Italian and they were arguing with each other, the exchange ended ... read more

Yup...$917 roundtrip airfare from Boise, ID to Rome, Italy! This is close to the record low of $850 we had the year we went skiing at Monterosa. We are headed back to Brindisi to visit our good friends Sara & Vincenzo. They are getting married! We will be accompanied by another set of excellent friends, Sam & Terri. This is their first time to Italy and we (Beth & I) intend to give them the "authentic experience." Our itinerary will be as follows: Spend a whirlwind day in Rome on our arrival day and then set out by car to Brindisi the next morning. Spend 4 - 5 days visiting all of our friends in Brindisi most particularly our beloved Mina (my Italian mother while we lived there). After that we are headed to Castellabate for ... read more

Ok...here goes yet another effort to post pictures. With Beth's technical assistance I think that the problem may be resolved. Eureka! Success. The problem was that I was trying to post high resolution photos and the file was too large. I bought a new camera to take photos with more pixels (those little Tinkerbelle creatures) for the travel book I am working on. Trying to post those photos wasn't working so Beth did some technical stuff and it worked. Solution: use two cameras. One for blog posting and one for the book project. I can't be bothered with that technical crap!!! Next up, the long awaited Daytrip to the Gargano Peninsula. After that, a trip to London! Yep, we have a three day weekend coming up and we will head to London. That will be ... read more

It took a while to get this posted. We went on spring break the last week of March. Just as I started to download photos my last battery went dead. We went through the futile exercise of trying to find batteries for the camera in town. Life here ain’t about convenience! Prior to our departure, out good friend Muhammed at Piazza di Vino told us that the USA is the most convenient place to live in the world. He wasn’t kidding. So anyway, I went online and ordered batteries from a place in the UK. Our trip went off without a hitch. We would have liked to have departed on Friday evening, but flights are limited out of Brindisi. We flew Alitalia to Rome then to Torino and then drove to La Thuile. The flights ... read more