Travel Blog Posts
March 15th 2010
Hello all! This will be pretty short. If you don't already know Em and I made it back to the States safe and sound. We have been traveling around seeing our families and friends. We've been in the Chicago area for 3 weeks and 3 more down in Kansas for some of the same. We are now on our way up to northern Wisconsin to stay with Em's pops to learn to make maple syrup and help with a building project. We are also looking and applying for some of those dreaded jobs. We hope everyone is doing well and if we haven't gotten together yet we'll catch up with you soon. Don't forget it's garden planning time, get those seeds started and grow some yummy food! Love you all, Emily and James ... read more
December 31st 2009
What a beautiful island, we truly enjoyed the 3 hour bus ride from Palermo to Catania, from one side of Sicily to the other. Surprisingly, there were so many rocky peaks, rolling hills, and of course lovely citrus orchards. We arrived to our next destination, La Casa delle Acque, on a particularly warm day, about 85 degrees F. We were welcomed with a spaghetti lunch and several bottles of champagne and local wine. I guess it was a New Years Eve Eve celebration. When we arrived to the house there were already about 15 people there and many more to come. The owner of the property Nirav, was away to Tuscany visiting family for the holidays. The two individuals in charge of the Wwoofers were Philip and Nele, a German couple that has been working ... read more
December 25th 2009
Merry Christmas to all! We know it’s a bit late but as is pretty much commonplace now we only have internet when we can get to the nearest town. We traveled to Naples via bus from Apulia; it was a 4 hour journey highlighted by huge rolling hills of green pasture and giant wind turbines spinning slowly in the breeze. As we approached Napoli we were right on schedule, then just as we entered the city we were caught in the everyday gridlock traffic common to the center of Naples, and it sure didn’t help that it was Christmas Eve. We felt a little sorry for the driver as he attempted to maneuver the gigantic bus as scooters and cars were constantly darting in front of him. Finally, arriving at the bus station about 40 minutes ... read more
December 20th 2009
Alright, we didn’t quite have time to finish our adventures in Apulia. So here we go again… Even though we didn’t feel like we were doing a lot of “real” work around the property we rarely had a day off. We did small jobs around the property, cleaned the house, collected wood, or went on the sometimes all day adventures to town. On our one and only day off we were very excited to take a trip to the sea. The place where we stayed was far enough down the heel that we were smack in the middle of the Mediterranean and Adriatic Sea. We had yet to see any type of ocean or sea since we have been in Europe so when Cybill suggested we take the big red van for the day we jumped ... read more
December 3rd 2009
Wwoof location number 2 took us to a beautiful location in the heel of the boot of Italy. Officially located in the area of Ostuni, the nearest town was actually Cisternino with a current population of 12,000 which during the summer months quadrupled to almost 50,000. Our meeting place to be picked up was the Fasano train stazione at 12.00 as the hour approached 2.30 we finally, after searching for a public phone and only finding ones out of service, had to ask a local for use of their cell phone. This conversation was a bit difficult as I used my broken Italian to explain our situation. This should have been our first clue of the adventure that awaited us on our 4 week stint at the trullo. The Trullo is the traditional living structure ... read more
November 25th 2009
Our journey to Rome was short, easy and no mishaps whatsoever, yay! We were traveling to Rome to stay for 5 days and to meet up with James’ cousin Brett. We arrived to the train station, jumped on the Metro and got off at Piazza di Republica. We had a bit of time to burn before Brett’s plane landed and we saw a lovely fountain that we decided to hang out at until his arrival. As we were relaxing on the edge of the fountain with several others that too were relaxing and people watching, we decided to lie down and relax our tired backs. Not but 10 minutes later a policeman came and asked us not to lie down on the fountain edge, this is the first time we realized that there were way ... read more
November 20th 2009
Our final week at Le Sorgenti was a relaxing one, we had some tasks to take care of which we mainly did in the mornings so that our afternoons could be spent exploring the countryside around the farm. Our main job that week was to continue clearing some thorny brush and we succeeded in making a huge pile for burning, it was roughly 4m wide and 3m tall. The last night before Costel left for Romania we made a gargantuan pot of vegetable stew. Costel gave us complements on the stew although we knew he would have liked it better with some Carne(meat). The stew was so massive that we ate some for either lunch or dinner for 5 days straight. James had to finish it off in the end with three bowls; Emily could ... read more
November 8th 2009
Ciao a Tutti, The beginning of our second week was an awesome experience. We were to take care of the animals day and night and were left several jobs to take care around the farm as Antonio was away to Germany. These jobs included hauling and spreading a large heap of gravel over the muddy spots of the driveway, clearing an area around a shed of vigorous spiny vegetation and out of control grapevines taking over, and cleaning out a large trailer containing leftovers from a haul of corrosive buffalo dung with a hose that barely put out a trickle of water. We got into our routine quite well, waking up at 7am to feed the animals, breakfast, working different tasks around the farm, lunch, and taking the goats to the pasture to eat fallen acorns ... read more
November 2nd 2009
We took the Rama bus from Florence to Paganico, a small village half way between Siena and Grosseto in the region of Tuscany. We were picked up at the bus stop by Antonio, the owner of the farm and a carload of his friends. As we traveled towards the farm, we stopped at a pizzeria for an aperitivo, a pre-dinner drink, and picked up some pizzas to go. Arriving at the farm some minutes later, we were graciously welcomed and slightly overwhelmed by 20 or so of Antonio’s family and friends that had been in town that weekend to celebrate the beginning of the olive harvest. With very few people speaking English, we tried to keep up with all the conversations. We were helped out by some of the younger family members who learned English ... read more
October 31st 2009
The travel from Milan to Florence was one of our shortest travel days, but ended up being our worst experience thus far. To start off we settled into the train in Milan Central Station for our 2 hour train ride and we were rudely asked to move our stuff not once but twice because of the so-called seat reservations which were completely unmarked so it was impossible to know where to sit. We finally found a spot of 4 seats with a table between them. We were then joined by an Italian guy that was apparently unable to bend his legs and took up the entire area. And then…about 20 minutes before we got off the train we were asked for our tickets and were told that we had to pay an extra 36 Euro ... read more
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