Rick and Barb's Italian Adventure

Greetings!

As anyone who travels can tell you, it's hard not to want to help others have their own great travel adventures. When I found out that my golfing friends, Rick and Barb Carlsen of Marin, were going to Italy, I decided that I might be able to help them get an early glimpse of what they could see. We had recently been to almost the same spots on their tour, and could put a photo video together to share with them.

Here it is:

Next Adventures

Greetings!

Next February, we're probably going on three tours to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. We'll include Indonesia and Singapore in the trip on our own, but the month long adventure will be mostly on tour.

Our tours:

· Start in Phnom Penh on February 1, 2011
· We'll join the “Temples of Angkor” 5-day journey, followed by the “Trails of Vietnam” 21-day journey
· Then, we'll enjoy two nights at the beach area of Phan Thiet, east of Saigon, before flying to Laos and having one night pre-tour in Vientiane.
· Our final tour is the “Highlights of Laos” 5-day journey, which finishes in Luang Prabang on March 4, 2011

To see the itinerary, click on each of the tours listed above at:

Next Trip

Gregory

Best of Italy Trip

Greeting!

In our effort to help others enjoy traveling, we've created two new videos of the hundreds of great photographs we took on our recent trip to Italy. The first is on mainland Italy, and the second is Sicily. They're only 7 minutes, so they won't take long. Hope you enjoy!!

Saturday, June 19th, Home

Greetings!

After 27 hours of airports, economy plus, and a life-saving couple who live in Sebastopol, we're home. Our flight out of Rome was delayed, the flight into Chicago directed to do three complete 20-minute holding pattern circles over northern Michigan (while a storm passed over O'Hare), and the flight out of O'Hare to SF was held on the runway for an hour while another storm passed. We were in the process of trying to book a hotel in SF to accommodate our too-late arrival for the Santa Rosa shuttle when Pat spotted a health care colleague in the Chicago airport. Their generosity (and parked Prius) was the complete antidote to an experience which has confirmed our commitment to try to book direct flights on international trips. Our dedication to using United mileage benefits, and VISA card payment miles, has just run out. While we may not be able to avoid weather problems, we can reduce their impact on us by avoiding connection-based delays they make worse.

Later this year, we'll travel to the East Coast (South and North Carolina, the Appalachian Trail, and a visit to the Boston area) in the Airstream. Our two travels in 2011 will include a February-March trip to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos - with some other side trips, and a September - November trip to East and South Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar, South Africa, and Namibia). IN the late summer, I'll be in the San Diego area for a 45th Point Loma High School Reunion.

Hope you enjoyed the time we spent together, and that you'll share with us your adventures.

Gregory and Pat

Thursday, June 17th, Ostia Activa

Greetings!

This morning, we visited the last ruin we'll see in Italy. It's probably the perfect one to leave for last, as it's the easiest to see a large amount of structures in a short period of time. Paestum was a series of civilizations which lived along the western coast of Italy just south of Salermo.

Here is a description from Wikipedia: "Founded around the end of the 7th century BC by colonists from the Greek city of Sybaris, the original name was Poseidonia. in the 5th century BC, the city was conquered by the Lucani. From the archaeological evidence it appears that the two cultures, Greek and Oscan, were able to get together and thrive. What is known is it later became the Roman city of Paestum in 273 BC after the Graeco-Italian Poseidonians sided with the loser, Pyrrhus, in war against Rome during the first quarter of the third century BC. During the invasion of Italy by Hannibal the city remained faithful to Rome and afterwards was granted special favours such as the minting of its coinage. The city continued to prosper during the Roman imperial period, but started to go into decline between the 4th and 7th centuries. It was abandoned during the Middle Ages and its ruins only came to notice again in the 18th century, following the rediscovery of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The decline and desertion were probably due to changes in local land drainage patterns, leading to swampy malarial conditions (this is difficult to picture, with the present aridity; the site is now left to lizards and a few tourists)."

It was flat, and easy for three nearly waster travelers to enjoy and photograph. Here is a link to today's photos (the last of the trip): Paestum

See you all soon

Gregory

Wednesday, June 16th, Paestum

Greetings!

We're all pretty exhausted. Italy has been great, and we are in complete awe of Sicily. But we've just completed an eight-hour drive from the slopes of Mt Etna, down to the port of Messina, across the strait by ferry, and up the long western coast and mountains (think California's Hwy 1 - only with more winding road and higher) to the town with the second to the last set of ruins we'll see in Italy.

Ken's completely wasted, Pat's almost wasted, and I'm actually going to pass on a chance to swim tonight on a beautiful beach with real waves. We're going to have one more dinner, and call it a night. I have to say, we've eaten more than we probably should for the past two weeks. Lately, we've taken to having breakfast, and a light lunch, in order to have room for dinner. For the last two days, we've just had a gellato for lunch (how tough, i know, Italian ice cream for lunch). But there's alot to eat at dinner, and we're not getting that much exercise during the day. The legs get a workout walking the ruins and museums, but the upper body suffers.

Oh well, a good excuse for garden work for Pat and golf for me. Tough life.

We'll be visiting the local ruins tomorrow morning, and then driving up to the Rome Airport. We'll turn in the rental car a day early, hang out tomorrow night in the hotel, and catch our planes early on Friday morning. You'll probably not see any posts until we're home on Friday night, possibly Saturday if we don't sleep well on the flight.

Thanks all of you for sharing our adventure with us, and we're hoping that you all get some adventures soon too. The market's back up, and hopefully we're all as rich as we were when we left. The Euro is down, and it was a great time for Americans to travel.

To see the few photos, click on: Campanile di Sicilia to Paestum

Love to all,

Gregory and Pat

Tuesday, June 15th, Capanile di Sicilia

Greetings!

We found a mountain castle hotel on the north side of Mt. Etna, with no internet in town. Here are the photos (Campanile di Sicilia sent to Picasa on Wed afternoon, once we had completed our long drive to the Messina ferry, and even longer to Paestum - on the Italian coast south of Salermo. Will write more after dinner later.

Gregory