What DaVinci Wouldn’t Eat – Even in Venice

How did Romeo get inside Juliet’s courtyard? Is visiting Venice traumatic for flood victims? Why are the Capulet entrance posts covered in chewing gum? When exactly did a medieval refugee camp start to become one of the world’s most famous and influential cities?

How to Deal with Old Italian Men & What You’ll See in the Alps

“So tell me… you and your young man — one bed or two?” said the fiesty 80-something Italian villager. He approached as I photographed the twlight mountains, houses, and rising moon in front of his abode on the hill. “Well this is a funny thing! I never come outside at night. First time I do I find a beautiful woman. What brought you here?”

The vista from the old man’s front yard…

I tried to dodge the bed question by feigning non-comprehension.

Foraging, Famous Cities, & Freedom

When a blood sucking insect is lodged in your leg, life ain’t pretty. Not quite thirty hours had passed in our little airbnb cottage before an ominous, “Honey? Could you look at something for me?” floated up the stairs to the kitchen.

Announcements & a Flopped ‘Farm’

The road leading from “home.”

Getting the next year of our lives organized was the bright side of wwoofing at an agriturismo in Tuscany. More on the results later. The not-so-bright side? Agriturismos are rural properties whose livelihood comes either partly or mostly from hosting paying guests. It’s a no-brainer that wwoofers help with the most pressing projects. It’s also a no-brainer that the most pressing projects at an agriturismo have to do with customers (i.e. cleaning) more often than farming. Since we wwoof to learn about farming (many do it as a cheap way to travel), we tend to stick to real farms. Exception made; lesson learned.

How did this wwoof spot draw us in?

Short Stories from the Old Continent

 Random observations in the midst of a Italian summer:

Things About Europe:

  • Riding on a train, minding your own business, you’re bound to jump a mile each time your locomotive flies past rail cars headed in the opposite direction. The bullet-like CRACK scared the &$#@ out of me the first… nineteen times.

  • Not only in Europe, but across Asia one very good marketing scheme has been slipping into my subconscious. Although the brand name differs, the logo doesn’t. My eyes light up each time I see the red and white “ice cream!” swirl heart.

  • Turns out the American Dream isn’t the only one worth chasing.

What to Eat in Naples: also ruins and Italian hitching

Where it all began…

One afternoon, in a trailer-house-cum-classroom outside Sunflower Elementary, a thick and commanding woman named Ms. Swenson gave a lesson to a small group of ten year olds. She spoke of Pompeii — an ancient city consumed so quickly by a volcanic eruption that bodies were frozen mid-stride. From that moment, I — a present student – began dreaming of one day going to gawk at all these bodies turned to stone, frozen snapshots of ancient life.

Well, either Ms. Swenson was wrong or my ten-year-old brain made a great leap from fact to fiction. Obviously burning hot lava can’t freeze anything. The real story?