London keeps calling

Let’s see, where was I? From Italy I’ll skip ahead a few months to March, when I went back to London for another week of BritFun. This was the trip where a charming old chap tried to pick up my friend Em and I. Naturally, there are other trip highlights to report, too, so let … Read more

Assisi? I see.

OK, one last post documenting our Christmas trip to Italy, and then I promise to go back to talking about funny signs and LOLcats. We spent the last day of our most recent Italian vacation driving through a freak snowstorm to the Florence airport; we spent the second-to-last day exploring Assisi on a warm, sunny … Read more

A small taste of Perugia

After ringing in the new year in Positano, we drove back to Rome to deposit our friends at the airport and then continued on for a couple more days of Italy. Since I had found cheap return flights out of Florence, we decided to explore someplace between there and Rome next. That left us still … Read more

Expat eats: in search of salsa

Maybe it’s all the Mexican food we ate on our recent trip to the US, but I’ve had enough of the crappy salsa offerings in Germany. Standard German grocery stores tend to stock one brand of salsa, usually Old El Paso. My attempts to find alternatives have not been good. I once joyfully bought up several types of salsa from a small Mexican store near Pariser Platz, only to discover at home that every single one of the jars had expired. A long time ago. (I ate them anyway.) And then this, the last straw:

Don't buy this.

Read moreExpat eats: in search of salsa

lounging around on the Amalfi Coast

From Naples we drove (brave people that we are) down to the Amalfi Coast. We rented an apartment just outside of Positano, so our first order of business was to meet up with the landlord and squeeze our car into one of the more impossible parking spots I’ve ever seen, perched on a small cliff … Read more

Eating Naples

Despite all the hype, I didn’t find pizza in Naples to be any better than the pizza in other parts of Italy. But it was still really, really, really yummy. And the seafood, oh the seafood. Below are some of the culinary highlights. 

Read moreEating Naples

Not getting robbed in Naples

Technically my first trip to Naples was over a decade ago, but my grandmother refused to let us get out of the bus – too dangerous. My second visit was similarly brief, although it involved a little more foot-to-pavement time.  So this time, my third visit, I was ready to soak it all in. Surely all those rumors about crime in Naples were exaggerated?

Read moreNot getting robbed in Naples