Europe

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

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

Christmas in Rome, part 2

The activities in my first post about Christmas in Rome were just ways to kill time between meals. I really go to Italy for the food. Christmas Dinner at Osteria Sant’Ana (not affiliated with the guitarist, as far as we could tell) was a welcome feast of everything delicious about Italy. Appetizers of smoked buffalo … Read more

Christmas in Rome, part 1

I’m a bit behind on my travel blogging. I’ll skip over a couple trips all together, but our winter adventures in Italy deserve a little more attention than they have received so far. We arrived in Rome on Christmas Day to find the metro closed. No signs, no information, just a big metal gate closing … Read more

Last day of 2009

Today we woke up to this view: Ate breakfast at this table: Went for a dip in the Mediterranean on this beach, which we had all to ourselves: Went for a walk around Positano: Saw this sunset: Now drinking Campari and snacking on fresh buffalo mozzarella and the yummiest green olives ever while listening to … Read more

Andorra: almost adorable

What a bizarre little country, Andorra. Nestled into the mountainous terrain between Spain and France, Andorra is basically a series of tiny little mountain towns. They’re completely unlike, say, Swiss mountain towns, in that each town consists of a small cluster of giant buildings. No cozy wooden mountain huts in sight. As a trade off … Read more