On 2 Legs

We're spending the last four night of our journey in Rome. I expected Rome to be like Paris and London. And I was right, even down to the crappy hotel. I guess Rome proper is supposed to be like other big, touristy, metropolitan areas and we are firmly of the opinion that we'll skip all big metro areas on future journeys. We did get to see the Colosseum. And inadvertently witnessed the 2018 Giro d'Italia bicycle race. Chris Froome won (whoever that might be ☺️). But we were not able to get a sense of the people until we skipped the hotel (we stayed one night out of a 4 night booking) and headed out to an AirBnB five miles outside of Rome proper. That's where we got to really see Rome. Like the tiny, thriving mom and pop shop with the slabs of meat hanging from the wall.  The itty-bitty basement restaurant with the incredible Peruvian food, whose owner and cook was a quintessential grandma in looks and manner.  The pizzeria whose owner gave us this little dumpling thing

Pompeii was destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mt Vesuvius.  That was the extent of my knowledge of this area. Now, I almost wish I didn't know as much. This wasn't a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. On the contrary. This was a thriving metropolis with not just homes and shops, but large structures, such as the ampitheater and the forum. The ruins were so extensive that we spent over 5 hours exploring them and only saw approximately 50% of them. As we walked perfectly laid out streets, marveling at the beautiful frescos, the mosaic tile floors, the stonework, the freize, the ingenious drainage, even the store signage (like "Vesuvino", a wine merchant's and earliest pun master), we began to get a feel for daily life in Pompeii. And we wondered why they would build such a bustling city next to a volcano. The simple answer is that they did not know.  There had been some tremors in the few years preceding the eruption, then an earthquake that did a large amou

We choose to visit Trieste on a whim. We had 3 days to kill and originally planned to visiting Slovenia and/or Croatia but couldn't find lodging. Then we saw the name "Trieste" on the map near the Slovania border. My nieces were born while the family lived in Cote de Trieste (NJ). Why not check it out? Best decision this whole trip! The town is just lovely and the people are what you would expect from a sleepy little Italian town.  We got into another AirBnB, this one with a 4-person elevator - - positively luxurious! -  - and got to experience living as a Trieste local. And, as a local, we got pizza from the shop at the end of the block. Except ordering pizza in Italy is not as easy as one would think. When ordering a mushroom pizza, I've never been asked what kind of mushroom (they had 4 different kinds!). Same with onions. Want sauce? You better ask for it. Italians are very specific about toppings! But all's well that ends well and this ended with the most per

We're sitting at a lovely restaurant at a piazza in Pompei, the four of us sipping some local wine and people watching. Dennis: "Wow. All those little kids are speaking Ita... Oh." Cue hysterical laughter.

In just four days, I've learned an incredible amount about this little jewel. That's not saying much, considering all I knew about Venice was that they had gondolas. The first thing we found as we arrived was "Snowdude and the 7 tall guys". Seriously. We got pics. There's two sections to Venice: island and mainland. The mainland part is called Mestre, whereas the island side actually bears the name Venice. And it's not an island. It's a lagoon with 188 islands separated by canals and joined by 400 bridges.  The most famous of the bridges is Rialto, which comes from the Italian phrase for "high river". It is a veritable maze of byways and bridges. The main thoroughfare being the Grand Canal. It just so happens that we were there on Saturday, Royal Wedding day. If you look closely, this group of boaters were wearing Harry & Meghan face masks. Others were wearing corgi masks. So we got to experience the royals, after all. 😁 We didn't ride

Welcome to a special series! In these we'll post all the funnies that happened but we forgot to included them elsewhere. So, here's the first one: While in Paris, I walked past a restaurant menu board that said "Onion Soup" and I thought to myself "Hey, they forgot to write the Fre... Oh." ~ Irene