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“God created a world full of little worlds. “
Yiddish proverb

A day without taking a photo is in many cases an ominous sign that the day was a wasted travel day. So when we found that we took no photo for 3 out of 4 days we knew we needed a change in plans.

Our original plan was to slowly making our way up the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. Relaxing on the beach and exploring the old cities.

But we are not the beach relaxing kind. And after seeing Kotor and Dubrovnik all the old towns seem to look the same.

The only day we did take a photos was the one day we did not stay near beach. Instead we were hiking all day in the nature reserve up in the mountains. Which got us thinking about mountains. For some mystical reason we never get tired of looking at them, hiking on them or driving over them.

So we looked at map of the area and saw Northern Italy all covered in brown indicating high altitudes.

So we decided to abandon our original plan…the Familia is going to ITALY!

That’s the nice thing about Europe with its open boards and Autostradas and Autobhans. After only a few hours of driving we were in a completely different world.

Since we yet didn’t have an Italian road map we let the GPS guide us in. So it happened that our entrance to Italy was done in the smallest mountain road that we almost literally got stuck between a rock and a hard place. We entered Italy almost like thieves in the night. For all our 1st hour in Italy we saw no one and passed not house nor car.

But then suddenly we were in the Dolomite Mountains, with high mountains, many resorts, many hiking trails and excellent food.

All day long we say words like “Pizza, Pasta, Piazza, Pesto, Puncha, Princa Pessa, prego” and walk in the most beautiful places.

The other day, during a 7hr walk in Alpe di Siusi, we took 207 photos! Which might explain why the walk took 7hr but also demonstrates how much fun we have up here!

“Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.”

In Milano I finally understood fashion.

Well, not exactly all of it. Just a little part of it - what is meant to be a shopaholic. Before Milano I did not understand how sane people can enter a shopping mall and buy without judgment and without any regard to the amount of money they have in the bank. They just buy and buy.

And in Milano I understood how that can be.

It’s not because we were in the fashion capital of the world. It was not the endless line of shops with nice cloths in the windows. It was because that in Milano, for the first time in my life, my credit-card was refused because I used it so much on the vacation that I was over my credit limit.

Yes. I am Yaron and I am a travel-holic. It appears that I have no regard to expenses when travel is involved.

So I can now sympathize with other expense-challenged addicts.

Like a good addict the solution was not cutting our travel expenses. The solution was using our 2nd credit card.

Hagit’s Holiday spirit

We like having the Jewish holidays among the our extended family , with many delicious courses and gifts to the children. On the other hand also like to take that time abroad to take advantage of the many vacation days . This New Year, we were in Opatia, Croatia. We took some time out from our travel and found a large apartment early in the morning before. We search a bit till we found an apartment with a big and equipped kitchen. We drove in a pouring rain to the biggest supermarket and bought all the necessary material to make dinner and a small present for Liya. I started working on the meal at about 16:30 and finished at around 19:00. By that time a four courses meal was ready! Not counting the Hala, apple with honey and margaritas (made with pomegranate juice since we didn’t find the actual fruit in the shop). The wonderful thing was the unlike at home, when you host a dinner party you usually have the burden to wash the dishes, This time- we left them all (pots, pens, plates. Glasses…) to the land lady to clean up when we left.

Yom Kippur’s fast was different from our usual routine- spending the day at Yaron’s parents. Yaron goes to the synagogue with his father and the rest of us have fun at home. This time, Yaron found a synagogue at Milano. Since we made the arrangements late, it was almost impossible to reserve a hotel that is close enough to the synagogue by foot (our first choice location, Venice, was totally full for the weekend). We found something very expansive and still very small and old looking. When arriving, tears washed my eyes. The smelly and tiny room was supposed to be our home for the next 48 hours. And rain was expected so we would be stuck there the whole weekend.. After RUCHA MAFSEKET with the HABAD people, I left Yaron for the rest of the evening and found myself with two kids, totally along in a huge and crowded city. I did not know where to go. I didn’t want to go back to the hotel and not sure how to find our way back there anyway. I was utterly depressed. After a while, I grippe myself together and after spending a nice evening just strolling , we surprisingly easily found our hotel and went to sleep. Next day was much easier and nicer, I was sure of myself and unless the rain, we could have had a good time. We ended up staying most of the day in the hotel which turned out to be not that awful.

Travel tip #239

Even though it is September all the hotels in Italy still use Summer-Prices. It seems that this confuses the proprietors of the hotels to think that it is actually summer. So even if the temperature outside is 12, 10 or even 5 deg they do not turn on the heating. After a cold night in Cortina we bought a little 2000W heater . We use it every day during the evening showers for the children and sometimes all night if it is really cold. I don’t think that I have ever seen a heater listed as a travel accessory but it should be! It’s much warmer than a good sleeping bag. It’s also lighter and takes less space. One time the heater blew the room electrical-fuse. After it was fixed we used the heater on the smaller 1200W mode and used it all night.

Recommended.

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