Ciao ancora! ( Hello again!) Having just completed five weeks of travel, Steve and I spent the past 6 nights in an agriturismo in the Umbrian countryside! (Believe it or not, we are almost to the half way mark of our trip) An agriturismo is a very common accommodation in the Italian heartland, as the Italian government encouraged rural entrepreneurs with financial support some years back. That is at least what we understood from Rosaria, our host, whose English...

Ciao from Umbria! Steve and I have decided to each write part of this blog post without knowing what the other is writing. So here we go! She said...... We just spent a wonderful week exploring the Tuscan Hill towns, with Cortona as our base. Our Cortonese home was of stone; built into the side of an Italian hill in the 1300's. But what was really spectacular was that the property was attached to a 2500 year old Etruscan wall (Etruscan society predates the Rom...

Buona Sera from Italia! After a full four weeks of non-stop travel, Steve and I have arrived in Cortona, an amazing medieval town in southern Tuscany (Made famous by the book, Under the Tuscan Sun). In the next post, I will tell you about our stay here, but I wanted to share a bit about our first week in Italy, a five day stay in the city of Bolzano-Bozen. Our week in Bolzano-Bozen, Italy will be remembered mainly for three things; a fabulous wine-drenched party...

We are smitten...Slovenia is AMAZING! With an abundance of natural beauty, friendly locals, and cheap drinks, Slovenia has completely charmed us. We spent a fabulous week traveling this small country, first landing in the capital city of Ljubljana by bus. After a day of seeing the city sights, we were ready to see the countryside. We rented our first car of the trip, an Opel Astra. Very nice ride, and it was great to have some freedom. So off to Lake Bled we w...

Budapest is but a memory now. (We are in Ljubljana, Slovenia now, after a 7 hour bus ride in pouring rain) So Budapest.... We stayed in the most beautiful apartment in the Jewish Quarter, which is a super-hip neighborhood. The apartment featured a chandelier over the bed, beautiful furnishings, and two balconies. However, we arrived on a Friday night and the bars outside the apartment were ROCKING all night. I mean all night - at 6 am the party finally stopped...