Italy 2009 Trip Day 1 - Wednesday October 14

4:39pm PDT: I truly cannot believe I am here sitting in the airport ready to go to Italy. I've been thinking about this trip for about two years. It still hasn't quite sunk in that I'm actually going and actually going today - despite the fact that I am sitting in the damn airport. I booked my ticket 6 months ago. How is it time already? Where does the time go? I fear the trip will fly by so fast it'll be like a dream. I must take a ton of pictures and try to remember every moment. Sorry in advance if I am boring with every detail :)

There's wireless here, but I am not going to pay $7.99. Dear LAX, Long Beach gives free wireless. Just FYI. I am bored already and have no internet to entertain me. How will I make it 11 days? As I said to a couple co-workers earlier today, I don't think I've been without the internet for 11 days since we GOT it when I was young. It will be a test of wills for sure :)

An uneventful shuttle ride. Came right on time at 2:40, but of course on the 405 we hit traffic so it took almost an hour to get to the airport. The other passenger in the van kept asking the driver to "drive smoothly" because he was getting carsick. Clearly he has never driven on the 405 before, because that road is impossible to drive smoothly on.

So, they didn't weigh my suitcase so I got IN with my carry-on with no extra effort. Now I wish I'd brought that extra pair of pants I took out at the last minute :) The international terminal, which I've never been inside before, is quite a mess. They're remodeling all over and once you get past security, a lady told me there was almost no food. So at about 4:00 I had a good old McDonald's fries. I hate McD's so much, but their fries are so damn good. I love how they're literally twice as expensive at the airport.

Back to the present, now, and here I am sitting in nearly-empty gate 104 more than 2 hours before boarding. But that's OK, I like the peacefulness of it. It seems like the weather might be clearing up a bit - If you'd told me a week or two ago that the weather was going to be nicer upon my arrival in Italy than it is here in LA, I probably would have laughed at you. But it's been awful here the last two days, which makes me feel even less badly about leaving for almost three weeks.

I'm already getting boring and my flight hasn't even taken off yet. I'm sorry in advance. I warn people about the dreaded "wall of text" every day at work and here I am giving you one. Oh, look, the incoming flight (the one I'll be taking on my trip back to LA) is arriving, just on time. Which is, of course, good news because that means my plane is here nice and early. People are taking pictures of it. I enjoy good pictures/memories as much as anyone, but really? The plane sitting in taxi at the airport? I guess whatever floats their boat!

It's quite interesting how, in the international terminal, English is probably the minority language. Feels like I could be at any airport anywhere in the world with the variety of languages being spoken and passports being flashed.

I'll stop boring you. For now!!!


5:20pm PDT: I spot sunshine in LA!!!!!!!!!!!

11:50pm CDT: I think we're over the midwest somewhere, according to the in-flight monitor thingy. Not far from Sioux Falls to be exact. The outside temp is -61F, because I'm sure you wanted to know. 8:41 left :( Had dinner, which consisted of surprisingly edible chicken, rice, salad, roll, and brownie. Before dinner they gave out a pretzel-y thing called something like "Happy Snack" (Amanda, I feel like this is kind of up your alley, so I've saved the bag and will take a picture for you later:)

When the flight first started, I looked up and, to my horror, saw no individually controllable a/c vent. My first thought was my coworker Mel's face when lovable Mr. Sterns was telling us that, to tell if the pressurization in your flight is working OK, you can check the a/c and make sure it's working. But soon after my mini-freak out, I felt some air so I am assuming all is well.

Flight has been smooth so far. Not much to report. Going to try to sleep as much as possible!

Where in the world have the last 5 months gone?????

Holy cow...

Last time I updated, I'd just booked tickets and finalized my itinerary. Now I leave in FOUR DAYS! Where has the time gone!!???!!?!?!

Pretty much everything is in place as I'd hoped. The lovely Renee will be joining me for the 2nd part of the trip, which should be much fun seeking out the gelaterie and fun shops all over Tuscany.

I got my new camera, the fantastic Olympus EP-1, and cannot wait to try out all its features in the most beautiful place in the world.

I managed to snag a (free!!!!) cheese tour in Parma through the cheese consorzio, so I hope that's awesome. Rented a car, which should be an...interesting.... experience :)

Now if only my body would cooperate! I decided to get my 2 bottom wisdom teeth out a month before leaving, then a few days ago my back started hurting badly and now I have a sore throat and am hoping it's nothing worth worrying about. When you have been saving and dreaming and preparing and planning something for basically 2 years, you just want it to be perfect! So, fingers crossed.

This weekend is all about packing and doing the final little things. I'm mostly packed and my suitcase (the 5pound Sub-0-G rolling carry-on) is about 1/3 empty. But man, getting down to 18 pounds is not easy! Hopefully Swiss Air is not too strict about weight.

So, it's ridiculous that I'm leaving so soon. The biggest thing left to hope and pray for is good weather. Of course, rainy Italy is better than no Italy, but we're hoping for the best!

I think I'll have internet the first several days of the trip. I plan on blogging like last time. Even when I won't have internet I'll write up every day and post it all when i get home!

Finalized Itinerary and the Lucky Hotels

Well, after much thinking and planning, i've solidified the itinerary for the trip that I previously posted about, and booked all the accommodation. Hurrah!

Leaving Oct 14 and arriving Florence Oct 15.

2 nights Florence - La Dimora del Centro B&B (new place and not many reviews, but dayum it's well-located and looks nice!)
3 nights Bologna - Hotel Paradise
1 night Parma (I'd normally never ever stay one night somewhere, but most of the trains to Cinque Terre have to double back through Parma anyway, so why not stay a night. I just hope that the morning of my departure, I can find a parmagiano cheese tour :() - B&B Rubra (how cute does this place look!)
3 nights Cinque Terre - Martina Callo's Rooms (look at that sea view!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
8 nights agriturismo outside San Gimignano - Podere Poggio ai Cieli (8 nights for 360 euros for a 1-bedroom FLAT are you joking!!?!?!!)
1 night Florence - same B&B as the initial two nights

Did a lot of research. Hopefully these places work out well. Yay! It's important to me this time around to stay at smaller, friendlier places. Have small places for everywhere except bologna (but that hotel is less than 20 rooms yay), I couldn't find a centrally-located nice-looking B&B there. guess it's b/c it's so much primarily a business/convention city. too bad, but this one should work out well anyway and the price was very right!

Picking hotels and whatnot seems to be the hardest part because of the research involved, but there's still much left to do, like planning itineraries and whatnot. You know me, anal retentive planner :) But i'm happy that way :)

gotta love the airlines....

So I booked my flight, leaving Oct 14, coming back Nov 2, for $579 a couple days ago. Today, that same exact flight is $817. Thank god I had the guts to book it when i did. Of course, with all the insanity with airlines, it's likely to go down again, but I doubt it'll go below $579, so I feel like I won the lottery I bit. PONTE VECCHIO HERE I COME!!!!!!!! :D

So now i'm starting the initial research, making up the actual itinerary, etc. 18 days may sound like a long time, but when you want to see the whole damn country, it's pretty difficult! This is what I'm thinking initially:

Arrive 7pm Florence

2 nights Florence

3 nights Bologna

1 night Parma (b/c it's silly to do a day trip from Bologna and then have to go back to get the train to Cinque Terre there anyway)

3 nights Cinque Terre

8 nights Tuscany probably near Siena/Central tuscany area in an agriturismo with car

get rid of the car and spend last night in Florence b/c the flight back leaves at 9:30am and I'd rather not try to navigate the roads at 6am!

It's Really Gonna Happen!!!!

When you find airfare from LA to Florence for $579 on a good airline at fairly convenient times, you take it. So, I took it. ITALY HERE I COME!!

Now the fun begins. Last time, I kinda had to work out the itinerary before booking flight, since I was flying open jaw. This time I have more flexibility - and 18 glorious nights to decide how to spend.

WOOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!

And the planning begins....

Due to moving, getting health insurance through my work, and getting a bigger-than-expected tax refund, it looks like Italy Fall 2009 is going to go ahead as planned. Ideas, itineraries, questions, dreams, wishes, hopes, plans, and everything else are spinning in my head. At least it might mean this blog can become alive again :P

Thank you!

I just wanted to say thank you to the people from the Rick Steves helpline (a fantastic and friendly resource of all your Europe travel needs and questions) who have said many kind things about my little blog. I wish I had more inspiration and words to keep updating. Feel free to read my trip blog from last summer and come back or subscribe for updates, maybe I'll find some inspiration soon :)

Photography on the Blog - I attempt HDR

To help keep the blog going a little better, I've decided to include my photography exploits on here. It kinda goes with the whole theme I guess, since what I've been playing around with have been my Europe pics.

I have long admired the photography at Stuck in Customs - I read his HDR tutorial and watched a couple videos on Youtube and decided to try it with some of my Europe pics. Granted my camera isn't as good, the pics were recorded in JPEG, and I only have one exposure for all but a couple of them, but some of the results are interesting nonetheless. Here are a few I've done in the past couple days:

Barcelona Cathedral (original and HDR)






Brugge Belgium





Stratford-upon-Avon





Casa Battlo - Barcelona, Spain



I'll keep experimenting with some of my more interesting trip pictures and hopefully after I get a new camera this summer I'll be much better-equipped to really learn this valuable art.

Planning Restaurants

So I've been MIA for so long, no one probably even reads this anymore. But that's okay, I'm doing this more for myself than anyone anyway, because it's fun! :) A job, a long weekend to a tennis tournament, and some misplaced priorities resulted in this blog getting pushed to the back burner, but that's done now. For me, writing about travel is really cathartic, it helps me dream and plan and hope for more interesting adventures, so I will really try my best to update more regularly than I have been lately (Certainly more than once a month!!!!!).

without further ado....

While I was planning my trip, something I grappled with was how far to take my planning. It was important for me to at least make rudimentary plans for what I'd be doing each day, if for no other reason than to make sure the sights I planned on a particular day made solid geographic sense and so that I wasn't planning day trips the days right before and after traveling between cities (to break up the train trips).

But one of the things I encountered on many travel message boards throughout my research was how much of the finer details to plan. Some people, I've noticed, make all their restaurant reservations before they left home! To me that seemed too much; it takes all the remaining spontaneity out of it, and for me, exploring and finding places to eat along the way and off the beaten are part of the fun of being on vacation. Plus, by limiting yourself to places that take reservations, you miss out on some of the best places - the little places you can't even find online, the dives, the locals-only places that are so good that you have to wait an hour to get in or go early, no matter what.

But on the other hand, all of the places I did write down beforehand turned out to be excellent; from the TER Steakhouse in Amsterdam to Purstner in Vienna to Florence's lovely Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco to the beloved Da Francesco's in Rome, these are places where I had wonderful - even memorable - meals, that I I never would have found but for the amazing suggestions of locals and more experienced travelers. Moreover, with the level of tourist traps that exist in a lot of the world's most attractive cities, it's nice to have a fall-back list of places given by locals and experienced travelers that, in a bind, you know you can try out in an effort to avoid the obvious traps where the food is as bad as the prices are high. And at the end of the day, I'd much rather over-plan than get stuck at a bad restaurant on vacation, especially in a place that has a great cuisine and great restaurants that has unfortunately succumbed to the tourist hordes.

I suppose it comes down to a couple of things. For me, trying certain foods in each city was important. In Italy, I really wanted to try good pizza and gelato, in Amsterdam I wanted to try a really good Argentine steakhouse, etc. So in the end, relying solely on spontaneity would have only hurt myself because I would probably have missed out on these and other jewels. But relying solely on advance planning would be the other extreme; i would have missed out on the spontaneity of finding my own jewels and gems, several of which I did find.

Like most things in travelling and planning, there in no right answer to this issue; we all have to decide and do what will make us happy. But I do think that if you are a foodie, you would be doing yourself a disservice to not travel somewhere without at least a couple of special and authentic places that will satisfy your culinary goals.

My Top Ways to Avoid Being an "Ugly American"

Oh goodness, I have been very bad about updating. Having a job will do that to a person! But hopefully it means future trips will be forthcoming! Anyway without further ado, here's something I have been working on:

Yes I know this is a touchy topic for a lot of people. I also know that Americans are not the only "Ugly" tourists - there are Ugly Brits and Germans and Japanese and everyone in between. But anyway. I'm not talking about subjects I've discussed in earlier posts, like my traveler vs. tourist one, where my feeling there was more about how we as travelers can get better and more profound experiences from our trips. Instead, this post is literally more about how not to offend the locals. Though I know some people might include traits like this in this "ugly american" category, I don't even mean those families who wear jeans and pristine white sneakers. I'm talking about those people, when you see them, actually make you ashamed to be from the same country as they are, whichever country that might be. So here we go:

1. Do not address people immediately in English, just assuming they will speak it back. Can you imagine working in a clothing store in the US and someone comes and addresses you in Italian or Mandarin Chinese? It's pretty unthinkable. It's not that hard to learn three words - hello, goodbye, and thanks - in whatever language is spoken in your destination's country or countries. Even saying "hello" in their language and asking if they speak English is a big step. Phrasebooks cost about $10; in the scheme of a trip that costs thousands, that's nothing.
   
2. Don't complain about stuff not being like home. You know, those people who sit in a cafe in Naples and look at their pizza and say all-too-loudly, "Wow, this isn't like it is at home" or who ask for a "latte" in Italy and are shocked to receive a mere glass of milk - I mean..... come on.....why bother going somewhere else to see their culture if you just expect it to be like home?!
3. Don't be ignorant. I actually read a trip report a few months ago and the person had the audacity to say that one of the reasons she did not like Italy was because people hung their laundry out to dry and why don't they all just get dryers. I mean... WHAT? I don't even know what to say in response to that.
4. Do greet shop-owners upon entering a store. The culture in Europe is more like you are walking into a shop-owner or restaurant-owner's home than mere business. A simple greeting can go a long way and, who knows, maybe you'll strike up conversation and have a great memorable little cultural experience!
5. Do not expect hotels outside the US to be like here. Star systems and ratings are not the same here as they are there. If you must have that same experience everywhere, book a big international chain hotel. But even in those sometimes the beds are made a little differently or the bathroom is not the same.
6. Do not disrespect the places. Flash pictures not only are completely ineffective when you're taking a picture of something more than a few feet away but they HARM the artwork you're trying to photograph in the first place. And I wanted to cry when I saw someone leave a cup of melting gelato dripping on a centuries-old stonework sculpture in Venice. How can people do things like that. This one should really be a no-brainer, but the tragedy is that it isn't.
   
7. Do learn the local laws and customs. Don't speak loudly about being ignored by a waiter in a culture where the constant hovering by waiters is not usual, it doesn't mean the waiter's being rude. Learn about tipping, learn about parking and driving restrictions.
   
8. And perhaps the most obvious and all-encompassing one of them all... be open-minded! Turn the differences into positives, learning opportunities, and fun experiences! Who knows what you'll learn or who you'll meet.

Of course, this list is not exhaustive, but they're some of the top important things I could think of. In over six weeks all across Europe, I experienced NO animosity about being an American. In fact, several times I encountered pleasure - people who wanted to know about me, where in America I was from, where I was traveling, etc. This myth that the rest of the world hates us is just that, a myth. I myself experienced the complete opposite. I think a lot of it is in the mindset. If we, as Americans, go overseas with open minds and hearts and stomachs (and unfortunately, wallets!), we will be treated by reciprocal open minds and hearts. I sure was, and I know that I am not alone!