Friday, August 21, 2015
Testing, 123, testing...
I'm glad I decided to take advantage of a rainy day to purchase a blog app and try to figure it out. This is not intuitive at all. Who knew traveling without a computer would be this difficult?
Monday, August 3, 2015
The final pieces
The return flights were simply a matter of looking at what was available and selecting how short we were willing to make our connection time at JFK. We just needed to make time to book them.
The car was a different story. How large - or small - a car were we willing to go with? Exactly how large was the new Fiat 500? And would our luggage fit in the car? How to find out? We took a drive to Wesley Chapel, to the nearest Fiat dealer, to check out the cars. I loved the retro looking Fiat 500s. Too adorable! And also the perfect size to be driving around Italy for not quite 4 weeks. We'll fit comfortably as will our bags, although we'll most likely have to keep our carry-ons in the backseat.
As of a few nights ago, everything that needed to be booked in advance, save our pizza tour, have been booked in advance.
I read somewhere online that it's important to bring along a guide book when doing a tour such as what we've got planned. We spent an afternoon at Barnes & Noble looking through guide books. None of them seemed to work. We left without a book. Late that week, looking for a cookbook, I found the guide book we'd purchased before our honeymoon. Yes, it's 5 years old, but it is as good as any other guide book that we saw in the store. Plus since several of the things we're doing are kind of off the beaten path, they don't show up in guidebooks. I will spend the next not-quite-2-months doing research online and taking notes. Today I wrote down restaurants I think we should try in Tremezzina, San Pellegrino Terme and Pienza (Siena). I hope to create my own little guide "book" before we pack for the trip.
I bought a new camera bag and a card reader for my iPad (no need to travel with a computer anymore). I still need to buy new SD cards. I plan to take a lot of photos. Lou got a new backpack. And I've checked to see that I can easily locate both our passports!
Stay tuned for further planning blog posts that will crop up from time to time.
And then the real purpose of this blog - to give you as detailed a trip report as you're interested in reading!
Napoli, the birthplace of pizza
I'd been searching for months for a pizza tour. Early on, all I seemed to find were other people's blogs talking about the way they explored Naples on their own, tasting pizza as they went. Naples? On my own? Isn't Naples super scary and super dangerous? Why isn't there an escorted pizza tour?
I didn't give up looking, and one day, right there on TripAdvisor was a company that does the Neaopolitan Historical Pizza Walking Tour. Perfetto! Check out Italy Hotline Tours.
We're still in the process of finalizing the details on that tour. We'd hoped to get a driver to pick us up at our hotel and take us to our guide in Naples. That proved to be prohibitively expensive. So we'll arrange our own transportation (train there and hydrofoil back) and go with the guide to fulfill an item on my bucket list.
OOPS!
Back track a moment. April 17th, the last day we had to cancel the agriturismo without cost came and went without me doing anything more with regards to booking the trip. We were still talking about the trip all the time, but I was still waiting to hear Lou's final decision on Sicily. And I wasn't ready to start paying deposits for the hotels we planned to stay at or the tours we planned to take. I spent the first week of July booking the hotels while Lou played on Google maps. Our trip was taking shape.
Or was it?
Which oops should I tell you about first? Should I tell you about how I booked most of our hotels for the wrong dates, remembering incorrectly the dates that I'd booked the agriturismo in October? Should I tell you about the oops with Lou's family, that they didn't really care if we stopped by to visit them when we were "in the neighborhood"? Or should I tell you the oops about the travel insurance? Or how about the oops with the points for our flights? Seriously, wasn't I a travel agent as recently as 15 years ago? Except for the family stuff (which I'm not even going to go into), how could I have made mistakes such as this?
First, the flights. We decided on the dates we wanted to travel and started looking at flights. We planned to use miles to pay for our tickets. It appeared that I only had enough points for myself but that Lou might possibly have had enough points for both of us. (The past few months my son, Steve, has been trying to teach me the ins and outs of using airline miles to purchase tickets. Since so many of them involve applying for new loyalty credit cards, we decided to make due with the miles we already had.) My miles were on United. Lou's were American Express Rewards points. When we went on our honeymoon, the American Express points were great. We transferred them to the mileage plan of our choice and got our tickets that way. In the interim years, American Express has limited their partnerships and made it more difficult to use points. Why should we pay over $1100 to use points to fly roundtrip from Orlando to Milan? Makes no sense, right?
We finally figured out that we could transfer his points to Delta's program and as much as I don't love Delta, we could fly on Delta using Lou's points. Only we miscalculated the points. Even after the transfer, he still didn't have enough points for both of us to fly. I suggested that he fly on Delta, I fly on United (or their Star Alliance partner, Lufthansa) and we meet. Nope, he wasn't going for that.
At this point, I remembered that Steve had mentioned something about airlines now letting you use miles to pay for one way tickets. I quickly logged into my United frequent flier account and saw that we could fly one way on Lufthansa and that I had enough points to do so. Lou checked on Delta and verified that we could also book one way on Delta, so we decided he'd book our flights home. I booked our outbound flight that night. We were going to Italy!
I then (ignorantly thought) that I had two weeks to book our travel insurance. Yes, I was a travel agent for many years. But... in my career as a travel agent, I had other people booking my clients' travel insurance. In the large agency I worked out, there were people who specialized in booking travel insurance. Once I was working on my own, I had my Canadian friend Marilyn helping me find the best deal for my clients for travel insurance. In my mind, I had two weeks after making my first payment to secure travel insurance in order to have preexisting conditions covered.
The day after I booked our flights, in early July, I went to the website that my friend Carolyn had given me, to look at choices for travel insurance. (It was, coincidentally, the same website that the agriturismo in Siena had sent to me over 6 months earlier, with the urging that I should book travel insurance soon.)
Here I am, looking at the choices, what it takes to get preexisting conditions covered and YIKES! I was supposed to have purchased a policy within 2 weeks of first giving my credit card to anyone. Like the argriturismo that I guaranteed with a credit card back in December! What do I do now? Well, in typical fashion, I spent several sleepless nights worrying about this, I finally confessed the dilemma to Lou and then I bucked up and called the phone number on the website to ask how I could recover from such a serious error. She quickly eliminated most of the plans I'd look at, she explained that anything we saw a doctor for in the past 60 days would be considered preexisting (awesome that we'd been in New York for most of the past month and weren't able to see any doctors). I quickly purchased what seemed to be the best plan - and imagine this, I slept like a baby that night.
The hotels being booked on the wrong nights was the least of our problems. Now that we had our outbound flights booked, I went to organize all my printed confirmations in date order. That's how I realized that ALL the hotels I'd booked in the past few weeks were booked for the wrong dates. The agriturismo dates were etched in stone by then. In very methodical fashion, I went about canceling and rebooking most of the same hotels. Some weren't available. (One said it wasn't available but when I clicked on "book," Expedia came back with a confirmation number.)
We fly into Milan, arriving early afternoon, giving us enough time to drive from Milan to somewhere around Lake Como, check in, walk around - and go to bed! I found it very overwhelming to pick a place to stay in the Lake Como area. Most of the hotels I booked as a travel agent, were way out of our price range. Which town was best, given our budgetary constraints? This part of our trip was on Lou's wishlist and I wanted to get it right. I finally booked a hotel in Tremezzina. I'm hoping that it's as convenient to seeing the sites as I think it should be. We'll stay there 3 nights.
Next, we're driving to one of the spots on my wish list, San Pellegrino Terme. We'll only spend two nights there, which will allow us to visit the spa on our one full day in town. (Booking the spa was another complete OOPS! The website for the spa is awful. Each time I'd try to add a service, the date would revert back to the current date in Italy. When I realized what I had done in booking the spa, because it was already that date in Italy, it was too late to cancel online. Thankfully, an understanding person in Italy corrected this oops for me.)
After seeing Letters to Juliet on the flight home from Milan in 2010, I've wanted to see Juliet's balcony. We'll swing by Verona for a quick lunch on our way out of San Pellegrino Terme towards the Venice area.
Then came the big Venice decision. To stay on the island or not. This was also high on Lou's wish list and like Lake Como, I want it to be just right. In the end, finances dictated. We'll spend one night off the island in Mestre (at what appears to be a lovely hotel), we'll spend one night on the island (and oh, what choices I had to make while booking that hotel. For a brief moment, we were booked into a religious, Jewish, kosher hotel... with not the best reviews) and then we'll go back to the first hotel in the Venice area for a night of sleep before heading to Siena the following day.
A week on a farm in Siena... that's been booked for almost 9 months.
Then on to Sorrento where we'll be staying at the hotel that Lou's nephew and his wife fell in love with on their trip to Italy in 2011 or 2012.
Since we're driving from Sorrento to Sicily, we picked a point along the way to spend the night. We'll be in Amantea. From my research, it seems as though not a whole lot of Americans - or foreigners - stay in Amantea. Should be an experience. And by then Lou's Italian should be in better shape to help us be able to communicate with people who rarely come in contact with Americans.
Our last three nights will be spent in Milazzo. We'll fly from Catania (the nearest airport) to Milan on EasyJet (that was another experience in booking), spend the night at a hotel near the airport and fly home via JFK the next day.
I hope I've got it covered. And did you notice that we still don't have a car booked? Or return flights?
Or was it?
Which oops should I tell you about first? Should I tell you about how I booked most of our hotels for the wrong dates, remembering incorrectly the dates that I'd booked the agriturismo in October? Should I tell you about the oops with Lou's family, that they didn't really care if we stopped by to visit them when we were "in the neighborhood"? Or should I tell you the oops about the travel insurance? Or how about the oops with the points for our flights? Seriously, wasn't I a travel agent as recently as 15 years ago? Except for the family stuff (which I'm not even going to go into), how could I have made mistakes such as this?
First, the flights. We decided on the dates we wanted to travel and started looking at flights. We planned to use miles to pay for our tickets. It appeared that I only had enough points for myself but that Lou might possibly have had enough points for both of us. (The past few months my son, Steve, has been trying to teach me the ins and outs of using airline miles to purchase tickets. Since so many of them involve applying for new loyalty credit cards, we decided to make due with the miles we already had.) My miles were on United. Lou's were American Express Rewards points. When we went on our honeymoon, the American Express points were great. We transferred them to the mileage plan of our choice and got our tickets that way. In the interim years, American Express has limited their partnerships and made it more difficult to use points. Why should we pay over $1100 to use points to fly roundtrip from Orlando to Milan? Makes no sense, right?
We finally figured out that we could transfer his points to Delta's program and as much as I don't love Delta, we could fly on Delta using Lou's points. Only we miscalculated the points. Even after the transfer, he still didn't have enough points for both of us to fly. I suggested that he fly on Delta, I fly on United (or their Star Alliance partner, Lufthansa) and we meet. Nope, he wasn't going for that.
At this point, I remembered that Steve had mentioned something about airlines now letting you use miles to pay for one way tickets. I quickly logged into my United frequent flier account and saw that we could fly one way on Lufthansa and that I had enough points to do so. Lou checked on Delta and verified that we could also book one way on Delta, so we decided he'd book our flights home. I booked our outbound flight that night. We were going to Italy!
I then (ignorantly thought) that I had two weeks to book our travel insurance. Yes, I was a travel agent for many years. But... in my career as a travel agent, I had other people booking my clients' travel insurance. In the large agency I worked out, there were people who specialized in booking travel insurance. Once I was working on my own, I had my Canadian friend Marilyn helping me find the best deal for my clients for travel insurance. In my mind, I had two weeks after making my first payment to secure travel insurance in order to have preexisting conditions covered.
The day after I booked our flights, in early July, I went to the website that my friend Carolyn had given me, to look at choices for travel insurance. (It was, coincidentally, the same website that the agriturismo in Siena had sent to me over 6 months earlier, with the urging that I should book travel insurance soon.)
Here I am, looking at the choices, what it takes to get preexisting conditions covered and YIKES! I was supposed to have purchased a policy within 2 weeks of first giving my credit card to anyone. Like the argriturismo that I guaranteed with a credit card back in December! What do I do now? Well, in typical fashion, I spent several sleepless nights worrying about this, I finally confessed the dilemma to Lou and then I bucked up and called the phone number on the website to ask how I could recover from such a serious error. She quickly eliminated most of the plans I'd look at, she explained that anything we saw a doctor for in the past 60 days would be considered preexisting (awesome that we'd been in New York for most of the past month and weren't able to see any doctors). I quickly purchased what seemed to be the best plan - and imagine this, I slept like a baby that night.
The hotels being booked on the wrong nights was the least of our problems. Now that we had our outbound flights booked, I went to organize all my printed confirmations in date order. That's how I realized that ALL the hotels I'd booked in the past few weeks were booked for the wrong dates. The agriturismo dates were etched in stone by then. In very methodical fashion, I went about canceling and rebooking most of the same hotels. Some weren't available. (One said it wasn't available but when I clicked on "book," Expedia came back with a confirmation number.)
We fly into Milan, arriving early afternoon, giving us enough time to drive from Milan to somewhere around Lake Como, check in, walk around - and go to bed! I found it very overwhelming to pick a place to stay in the Lake Como area. Most of the hotels I booked as a travel agent, were way out of our price range. Which town was best, given our budgetary constraints? This part of our trip was on Lou's wishlist and I wanted to get it right. I finally booked a hotel in Tremezzina. I'm hoping that it's as convenient to seeing the sites as I think it should be. We'll stay there 3 nights.
Next, we're driving to one of the spots on my wish list, San Pellegrino Terme. We'll only spend two nights there, which will allow us to visit the spa on our one full day in town. (Booking the spa was another complete OOPS! The website for the spa is awful. Each time I'd try to add a service, the date would revert back to the current date in Italy. When I realized what I had done in booking the spa, because it was already that date in Italy, it was too late to cancel online. Thankfully, an understanding person in Italy corrected this oops for me.)
After seeing Letters to Juliet on the flight home from Milan in 2010, I've wanted to see Juliet's balcony. We'll swing by Verona for a quick lunch on our way out of San Pellegrino Terme towards the Venice area.
Then came the big Venice decision. To stay on the island or not. This was also high on Lou's wish list and like Lake Como, I want it to be just right. In the end, finances dictated. We'll spend one night off the island in Mestre (at what appears to be a lovely hotel), we'll spend one night on the island (and oh, what choices I had to make while booking that hotel. For a brief moment, we were booked into a religious, Jewish, kosher hotel... with not the best reviews) and then we'll go back to the first hotel in the Venice area for a night of sleep before heading to Siena the following day.
A week on a farm in Siena... that's been booked for almost 9 months.
Then on to Sorrento where we'll be staying at the hotel that Lou's nephew and his wife fell in love with on their trip to Italy in 2011 or 2012.
Since we're driving from Sorrento to Sicily, we picked a point along the way to spend the night. We'll be in Amantea. From my research, it seems as though not a whole lot of Americans - or foreigners - stay in Amantea. Should be an experience. And by then Lou's Italian should be in better shape to help us be able to communicate with people who rarely come in contact with Americans.
Our last three nights will be spent in Milazzo. We'll fly from Catania (the nearest airport) to Milan on EasyJet (that was another experience in booking), spend the night at a hotel near the airport and fly home via JFK the next day.
I hope I've got it covered. And did you notice that we still don't have a car booked? Or return flights?
More on Sicily
Once the decision was made to tack on Sicily to the end of our trip, our good friend Rosario, from Sicily, would ask us about our plans each and every time we went into his deli, Little Italy in Inverness.
Rosario laughed and laughed when he heard about our $45 per night agriturismo. But he didn't try to convince us otherwise.He did, however, convince us to drive from Sorrento to Sicily, along the coast, rather than taking the train.I really didn't enjoy being in the car so much on our honeymoon (nor did I enjoy the tickets we received after the fact) and I was looking forward to being on the train. But... Rosario did have a point. I'd keep an open mind.
While Lou was spending his time playing on Google maps, I started booking more hotels. We still hadn't agreed on dates for the trip. We hadn't seriously starting looking at flights. But I wrote up a rough itinerary, did my research on TripAdvisor and Expedia, and I started booking.
Rosario laughed and laughed when he heard about our $45 per night agriturismo. But he didn't try to convince us otherwise.He did, however, convince us to drive from Sorrento to Sicily, along the coast, rather than taking the train.I really didn't enjoy being in the car so much on our honeymoon (nor did I enjoy the tickets we received after the fact) and I was looking forward to being on the train. But... Rosario did have a point. I'd keep an open mind.
While Lou was spending his time playing on Google maps, I started booking more hotels. We still hadn't agreed on dates for the trip. We hadn't seriously starting looking at flights. But I wrote up a rough itinerary, did my research on TripAdvisor and Expedia, and I started booking.
A closer look at Sicily
Lou started looking at itineraries of tour companies, mostly in Sicily, to make sure that our planned itinerary made sense.
He found several interesting itineraries. And then he found this amazing company. Tour de Forks
Check out the website. If you're anything of a foodie, it sounds amazing! I wrote up an email and sent it off. We figured that even if it was twice what we'd planned to spend during our time in Sicily, it would be worth it. We wouldn't have to rent a car (and more importantly, someone else would be driving) and we'd be spending time with like-minded foodie travelers. Sounded perfect.
I wrote up an email and sent it off.We emailed back and forth a bit and then arranged a time to speak to Melissa about the trip.One of her first questions to me was, "Are you comfortable driving around Sicily?" Hmm. What about being driven around with like-minded foodie travelers? "This is an independent tour." Yes, we were still interesting in seeing the salt pans in Trapani and tasting marsala in Marsala. But we wanted to do it with other people. Not drive place to place alone to meet a different guide at each site we'd stop at. The price really blew me away. We were prepared to spend double than our previously allotted budget, but nearly 4 times? And we'd still need to drive ourselves? Um, nope. That wasn't what we had in mind.
For the following few weeks, Lou kept asking himself (and me) if we really wanted to go to Sicily. "No one is there anymore. Why are we even going? What are we going to see?" So about a month after being really excited about traveling with Tour de Forks, Sicily was removed from our itinerary. I didn't trust it would stay off the itinerary. But as far as Lou was concerned, there was no need to go back to Sicily on this trip - that started because Lou wanted to see "the rest" of Sicily, the parts he hadn't seen growing up or on previous trips.
I guess I didn't understand how Sicily could be deleted. We're going to be in Sorrento. Isn't that like a stone's throw from Sicily? If I lived in a country other than the United States and we were going to be in Washington, DC, wouldn't I want to revisit Brooklyn, New York, the place where I was born? Wasn't this the same?
If people asked us if we were going to Sicily, Lou said no. And I said, "We'll see."
At about this time, I decided that I didn't really want to be gone for 6 weeks. I didn't want the expense of a 6-week vacation, and I didn't want to be away from home for that long. We decided to keep our trip to the original 4 weeks on the mainland, just excluding the final 2 weeks in Sicily.
Until....
I realized that Lou was spending an inordinate amount of time on Google Maps, street view, exploring parts of his past in Sicily. He'd call me over to look at his screen and he'd reminisce and give me tours.... and "Really, you don't want to go to Sicily? We can take the train there from Sorrento, spend a few days and fly home."
And that's what we decided to do. Sicily will now be the last 3 days of our trip. We'll go to Messina, stay in Milazzo and take a trip down Memory Lane. Since Lou was born on a farm, I booked us a room at an agriturismo cum RV park. Lou's okay that we're going to Sicily. He's okay with the train (my choice). But he doesn't seem particularly thrilled with the idea of an RV park. No matter how clean it is. It had better not be another Bonassola. (That was the one night during our honeymoon trip to Italy where Lou took one look at the room - once we were already there - and said, "I'm not staying here!")
He found several interesting itineraries. And then he found this amazing company. Tour de Forks
Check out the website. If you're anything of a foodie, it sounds amazing! I wrote up an email and sent it off. We figured that even if it was twice what we'd planned to spend during our time in Sicily, it would be worth it. We wouldn't have to rent a car (and more importantly, someone else would be driving) and we'd be spending time with like-minded foodie travelers. Sounded perfect.
I wrote up an email and sent it off.We emailed back and forth a bit and then arranged a time to speak to Melissa about the trip.One of her first questions to me was, "Are you comfortable driving around Sicily?" Hmm. What about being driven around with like-minded foodie travelers? "This is an independent tour." Yes, we were still interesting in seeing the salt pans in Trapani and tasting marsala in Marsala. But we wanted to do it with other people. Not drive place to place alone to meet a different guide at each site we'd stop at. The price really blew me away. We were prepared to spend double than our previously allotted budget, but nearly 4 times? And we'd still need to drive ourselves? Um, nope. That wasn't what we had in mind.
For the following few weeks, Lou kept asking himself (and me) if we really wanted to go to Sicily. "No one is there anymore. Why are we even going? What are we going to see?" So about a month after being really excited about traveling with Tour de Forks, Sicily was removed from our itinerary. I didn't trust it would stay off the itinerary. But as far as Lou was concerned, there was no need to go back to Sicily on this trip - that started because Lou wanted to see "the rest" of Sicily, the parts he hadn't seen growing up or on previous trips.
I guess I didn't understand how Sicily could be deleted. We're going to be in Sorrento. Isn't that like a stone's throw from Sicily? If I lived in a country other than the United States and we were going to be in Washington, DC, wouldn't I want to revisit Brooklyn, New York, the place where I was born? Wasn't this the same?
If people asked us if we were going to Sicily, Lou said no. And I said, "We'll see."
At about this time, I decided that I didn't really want to be gone for 6 weeks. I didn't want the expense of a 6-week vacation, and I didn't want to be away from home for that long. We decided to keep our trip to the original 4 weeks on the mainland, just excluding the final 2 weeks in Sicily.
Until....
I realized that Lou was spending an inordinate amount of time on Google Maps, street view, exploring parts of his past in Sicily. He'd call me over to look at his screen and he'd reminisce and give me tours.... and "Really, you don't want to go to Sicily? We can take the train there from Sorrento, spend a few days and fly home."
And that's what we decided to do. Sicily will now be the last 3 days of our trip. We'll go to Messina, stay in Milazzo and take a trip down Memory Lane. Since Lou was born on a farm, I booked us a room at an agriturismo cum RV park. Lou's okay that we're going to Sicily. He's okay with the train (my choice). But he doesn't seem particularly thrilled with the idea of an RV park. No matter how clean it is. It had better not be another Bonassola. (That was the one night during our honeymoon trip to Italy where Lou took one look at the room - once we were already there - and said, "I'm not staying here!")
First things first!
Even though this was "Lou's trip," since I was responsible for booking most of it, in December I decided to book the part of the trip that I wanted most first, just to get the ball rolling. I started looking at agriturismos in the Tuscany area. I didn't know anyone who'd ever done a farm stay so TripAdvisor and google became my best friends.
I found several that seemed promising, but I settled on Agriturismo Cretaiole in Pienza. http://www.cretaiole.it/index.php/en/ It sounded like just what I was looking for. A relaxing farm stay outside a historic Italian town. Good food, good company, guidance on what to see, do and eat.
I started communicating with Isabella at the hotel. By December 16th, I had us booked into La Cantina for the week starting October 3rd, complete with the Dolce Vita stay which includes tastings, cooking class and tours. Perfect! I only needed to guarantee the reservation and we'd be out no money if we canceled prior to April 17th. I figured we'd have a better idea of what the rest of our trip was going to look like by then. Plus I figured that would be the time that I'd have to start worrying about trip insurance. Right?
I found several that seemed promising, but I settled on Agriturismo Cretaiole in Pienza. http://www.cretaiole.it/index.php/en/ It sounded like just what I was looking for. A relaxing farm stay outside a historic Italian town. Good food, good company, guidance on what to see, do and eat.
I started communicating with Isabella at the hotel. By December 16th, I had us booked into La Cantina for the week starting October 3rd, complete with the Dolce Vita stay which includes tastings, cooking class and tours. Perfect! I only needed to guarantee the reservation and we'd be out no money if we canceled prior to April 17th. I figured we'd have a better idea of what the rest of our trip was going to look like by then. Plus I figured that would be the time that I'd have to start worrying about trip insurance. Right?
The trip of a lifetime
Since leaving Sicily in 1956 for a new life in the United States, Lou has only been back to Sicily 4 times. And the last time, in 2010, we were only in Messina for half a day as a stop on a Mediterranean cruise. Years ago, about the time that I declared I didn't want to revisit any US state until I'd seen all 50 (that's not going too well), Lou made known that he wanted to plan a trip to explore Italy - and Sicily - for his 65th birthday. He wanted to circumnavigate the island of Sicily. He wanted to stay for at least a month, possibly as long as six weeks. He wanted to rent an apartment or two and live like an Italian. For years, it was all talk. All of a sudden, his 65th birthday was less than a year away and it was time to plan.
Questions came up. How were we going to split our time between mainland Italy and Sicily? Where were we going to base ourselves? Will I have time to learn Italian?
Because the focus of our trip was Sicily, we mapped out a driving itinerary around Sicily. Starting in Messina and ending in Palermo. (Years ago, Lou's mother beseeched us not to visit Palermo on our first trip to Sicily together. Could we actually visit Sicily this time, even though his mother has been dead for years, knowing that it went against her wishes?)
I came up with a 12-day itinerary for our trip to Sicily. We would start in Palermo and visit Trapani, Marsala, Agrigento, Ragusa, and Siracusa. I left us 3 days at the end of our trip to explore the parts of Messina where young Luigi spent his early days.
Then I started planning our mainland trip. I knew what we wanted to see... but was there a way to base ourselves one place while seeing all we wanted to see. Lou had his "must visit" spots - Venice and Lake Como. And I wanted to do a stay at an argriturismo (a farm stay), wanted to eat pizza in the birthplace of pizza, Naples, and I wanted to see the Amalfi coast. How were we going to fit this all in? Of course, if we were "in the neighborhood," I wanted to stop in San Pellegrino Terme. Can you think of a better photo op for the Pellegrinios while doing Italy?
I emailed Lou's cousin, a travel agent in Switzerland, for her advice. I sent her our proposed itinerary, and she sent back an itinerary that looked more like something the first-time Italian visitor would see. At least I knew that wasn't what we wanted to do.
We spent nights just pouring over websites, trying to figure out what to include and what not to include in our "trip of a lifetime." When should we leave? We knew we wanted to be home on Lou's actual birthday, November 16th. Okay... what was 6 weeks before that?
Questions came up. How were we going to split our time between mainland Italy and Sicily? Where were we going to base ourselves? Will I have time to learn Italian?
Because the focus of our trip was Sicily, we mapped out a driving itinerary around Sicily. Starting in Messina and ending in Palermo. (Years ago, Lou's mother beseeched us not to visit Palermo on our first trip to Sicily together. Could we actually visit Sicily this time, even though his mother has been dead for years, knowing that it went against her wishes?)
I came up with a 12-day itinerary for our trip to Sicily. We would start in Palermo and visit Trapani, Marsala, Agrigento, Ragusa, and Siracusa. I left us 3 days at the end of our trip to explore the parts of Messina where young Luigi spent his early days.
Then I started planning our mainland trip. I knew what we wanted to see... but was there a way to base ourselves one place while seeing all we wanted to see. Lou had his "must visit" spots - Venice and Lake Como. And I wanted to do a stay at an argriturismo (a farm stay), wanted to eat pizza in the birthplace of pizza, Naples, and I wanted to see the Amalfi coast. How were we going to fit this all in? Of course, if we were "in the neighborhood," I wanted to stop in San Pellegrino Terme. Can you think of a better photo op for the Pellegrinios while doing Italy?
I emailed Lou's cousin, a travel agent in Switzerland, for her advice. I sent her our proposed itinerary, and she sent back an itinerary that looked more like something the first-time Italian visitor would see. At least I knew that wasn't what we wanted to do.
We spent nights just pouring over websites, trying to figure out what to include and what not to include in our "trip of a lifetime." When should we leave? We knew we wanted to be home on Lou's actual birthday, November 16th. Okay... what was 6 weeks before that?
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