Since last I blogged back on January 7 I’ve continued to plan and obsess for our month in Italy. At the top of the list has been taking a semester of Italian at the Berkeley annex for the The School of Italian Language and Culture. I now know just enough Italian to at least be able to embarrass myself in two languages instead of just one. I had originally intended to continue on with the second and third semesters but I wasn’t able to arrange my schedule to accommodate the Monday evening classes with any regularity so it’s back to Rosetta Stone on my laptop for me. For the most part I think I can manage the pronunciation reasonably well but as to verb conjugations, dream on. When ordering for D and I, I sense there’s going to be a whole lot of bilingual pointing going on; pointing to D and then to the menu, pointing to me and then to the menu. Hey, as long as I can get Fagioli all’uccelletto on my plate in Tuscany and Spaghetti alIa carbonara in my bowl in Rome, I’ll use whatever means are possible, be it gestures or grammar.

I’ve also begun booking us one guided day tour in each of our three locations (Rome, Tuscany, the Amalfi Coast). While D and I are most excited about seeing Italy on our own, going where we want to go and going at our own pace, we also want to experience a few of the major sites with people who know their stuff. In each location Untours provides a special event for all their clients who are located in the same area at the same time. Rome includes a private guided tour of St. Peter’s Basilica and Sistine Chapel; in Tuscany we gather for lunch and a guided tour of a local abbey and while the event for the Amalfi Coast is still to be determined (Amalfi is a new region for them), I’m hoping Limoncello is included prominently in the plans.

The bookings I’ve made for D and I in Rome include two outings with Context Travel. On our first full day in Rome we’re going on their three hour walking tour, Savoring Rome, A Culinary Stroll that will give us not only the chance to get a taste of Rome but help us get a lay of the land for our days on our own. A couple days later will go on a four hour guided tour of the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill and the Colosseum on Roma Antica. Our apartment is a five minute walk from the center of ancient Rome and so I’m sure we’ll find ourselves back at the forum on another day as well as to Maritime Prison where the Apostle Paul was imprisoned while in Rome.

Our days on the Amalfi Coast will be spent strolling through the coastal villages (we’ll access them via the coastal bus line) and hiking the trails between Atrani and Ravello and over near Positano, but we’ve already arraigned a private tour of Pompeii with Gaetano Manfredi, a guide that comes highly recommended by Rick Steves. A private driver will take us to Pompeii where we’ll meet up with Gaetano for a two-three hour tour. Then it’s back with our driver for some touring and a slice of pizza in Naples before driving to Mount Vesuvius for a bit of a climb.

The other location where we want to arrange a guided tour is in Florence but right now those plans are a bit up in the air and so I’ll post what we’re doing when everything is finalized. Suffice it to say, whichever way we go in Florence the focus will be food, fun, and fotos!

Okay. That updates you on my progress with Italian and our guided tour plans. I could go on but it will wait for another post. For now I have another X to mark off on the calendar!

With our departure date for Italy 6080 hours away and our airline tickets and apartment rentals already booked, it would seem there wouldn’t be all that much more to do to get ready for another….oh…..4175 hours, but if you’re thinking that, then you don’t know me. D does which is why she’s already accepted that for the next 6080 hours my full-time job will be I-T-A-L-Y.

Even our Christmas was a slice of Italy. I bought her Italian wine books and she bought me Italian cook books, and we spent Christmas Day watching the Rick Steve’s DVD’s on Italy’s Country Side I bought her while I played with the anti-theft backpacks I bought for both of us.

And over the past month I’ve scoured the internet to find one-day cooking classes in Italy, corresponded with a private guide in Italy via email about a private tour to Pompeii, scored great restaurant reviews from other travelers on Slow Travel, and bookmarked tour companies that lead biking day tours in Tuscany and day hikes on the Amalfi Coast. I’ve downloaded dozens of podcasts on my iPhone including Traveling to Italy, The History of Rome, How to Tour Italy, and Rick Steve’s Italy Audio Tours and have a half dozen new travel apps loaded and tested. I’ve checked out luggage at the local travel shop, looked over walking shoes, checked out clothing at Travel Smith, purchased city and region maps and the Eyewitness Travel Books for Tuscany, Amalfi, Italy, and the Amalfi Coast, and a new camera. I’m through the first four lessons of Rosetta Stone Italian and begin taking Italian classes next week at the Berkeley extension of The Italingua Institute of San Francisco.

And now on the center of our main living room wall is our Tuscany wall calendar and map of Italy so that I can cross out each of the 253 days that remain until our departure and chart our itinerary on the map; black pins mark our three apartments, red pins are the cities and villages we most want to visit, and white pins mark all those places we hope we can get to if only distance and time will allow.

This might all seem over the top and maybe it is for normal people but I recognize and accept that when it comes to making plans I lean away from normal and toward obsessive. For this Type A girl the more I plan the more I relax, the more details I work out on our itinerary the more freedom there is to be spontaneous in the moment, and the more I research and learn and shop and plan for Italy, the more fun I have because anticipating a trip is nearly as fun as going on the trip. The operative word being nearly. And of course, while I make all these plans I do so knowing that when it comes to traveling or life in general, everything can change and the best plans can go out the window at the last moment. The airline goes on strike. The flight is delayed. One of us gets sick. We both get sick. A loved one dies. The place we intended to go see on a Tuesday is closed until Friday. The private guide is a no-show. The restaurant with all the rave reviews ends up being mediocre. The apartment toilets overflow. Traveling, like life in general, has unplanned interruptions and surprises which is why all the time I’m planning I remember everything can change. It’s also why ten minutes after I booked the airline tickets and put the deposit down on the apartment rentals, I bought travel insurance. Just in case. I only hope hope hope we don’t have to use it.

]]> http://www.anitasblog.com/the-best-laid-plans-of-mice-and-travelers/feed/ 0 http://www.anitasblog.com/italy-via-untours-and-slowtravel/ http://www.anitasblog.com/italy-via-untours-and-slowtravel/#comments Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:21:04 +0000 Anita http://www.anitasblog.com/?p=917 . In my 20's an 30's I went to Israel a number of times (including one long, glorious summer) and along the way to and from managed to piggyback a few days in other countries like Jordan, England, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, and Italy. I only had... Don't stop now...keep reading!

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In my 20′s an 30′s I went to Israel a number of times (including one long, glorious summer) and along the way to and from managed to piggyback a few days in other countries like Jordan, England, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, and Italy. I only had four days in Italy and all of them were spent in Rome, with my clearest memory being in the Sistine Chapel, laying on my back on the cold marble floor taking a photograph directly under God’s fingers and Adam’s hand. I went back one more time years later when traveling with my sister and parents and the memory I have from then is of my sister and I sitting on our beds in the hotel dividing up the last of the Skittles we’d packed from home. That’s about all I remember because we were literally in and out of the country in less than 24 hours. Flight in. Flight out. Barely enough time to say ciao!

Ever since then I’ve wanted to go back to spend some real time there; to walk the streets, to go to the countryside, to meet the people, to experience Italy, and I’ve always wanted to travel with D, to show her places I’ve been and to have new adventures in new places with her. Two summers ago we had the chance to go with a small group of people from our church to Greece and while the entire trip was amazing, the best days were the ones spent before the official tour began and after it ended when D and I were the only people we knew in the entire country and had time alone to explore it for ourselves. Ever since then we’ve dreamed about traveling alone together and after storing away enough frequent flier miles we decided to begin a new decade with an extended visit to Italy.

And so at the beginning of December I booked our airline reservations for Italy with British Airways. First class. Our frequent flier miles covered it all except for a small chunk of chump change they attached for taxes, fees, and surcharges and as it now stands we’ll be flying into Rome mid-September 2010 and leaving from Naples one month later. 30 days in Italy. She, me, and we. One week in Rome, two weeks at a vineyard farmhouse in Tuscany, and a final week on the Amalfi Coast. La vita dolce indeed!

Better yet, we’ll be slooooooow traveling on our own so that rather than traveling with a tour group, sleeping in hotels in tourist areas, rushing through museums fast enough to qualify for the Olympic time trials, and seeing the people of Italy through double-thick bus windows we’ll be staying in private apartments in established neighborhoods, shopping for groceries at open markets, and following a travel itinerary that will provide as much time for lingering over espresso at corner cafes and sitting on the edge of a fountain eating gelato as it will for taking in all the grand sites of this historically rich country.

Traveling this way is easier than you might think because there are incredibly resources out there. D and I are using a company called Untours that came highly recommended to us by friends who’ve traveled with them for years and not only do we love the services they offer but they totally won me over with their long-standing commitment to direct the majority of their profits toward social investing.

Untours describe what they do as “providing independent travel with support” which means they handle all the pesky little arrangements that had me wondering in the past if traveling alone was more trouble than it was worth. Among the details Untours covers is that they:

• arrange for our accommodations by personally inspecting all the apartments on site before adding them to their list of available rentals, which we then selected from using their detailed descriptions and photographs
• provide us with independent transportation from rental cars and/or public transportation passes depending on the area
• arrange for a local representative to pick us up at the airport, deliver us to our apartment, acquaint us with the local area and then at the end of our stay return us to the airport for our departure for home….even if means dragging us from our apartment and Italy against our will!
• pre-stock several days worth of groceries at each destination to hold us until we become familiarized with the area
• provide a local contact person to answer our questions while in country and assist in the event of an emergency
• supply advance assistance and travel information as we prepare for our travel to Italy

And with those travel details out of the way, our time is our own, and if all that isn’t sweet enough I somehow managed to stumble into the Slow Travel community. What an incredible resource and what amazing people! There are folks from around the world participating in their forums that are dedicated to slow travel and the pool of knowledge they have between them is incredible. So far most of my time has been spent devouring trip reports from members who’ve been to Italy, going over archives of material that provide travel tips and advice, and of course, pouring over every entry in the section devoted to Italy.

Awesome. Just awesome.

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Oh, who am I kidding?!

We’re going to Italy!

I’ll tell you more in a second. I just need to go splash some cold water on my face and pinch myself.

Okay. I’m back.

For the past few years D and I have talked about, dreamed about, fantasized about, and now, courtesy of our storehouse of frequent flier miles, have confirmed our travel plans to Italy! In 256 days we will be outbound on British Airlines and since this section of my blog (SavOURing) is dedicated to our daily lives as well as our travels near and far, I’m going to be blogging incessantly and enthusiastically over the coming months about preparations for our trip and then, while in Italy, I’ll be blogging about our daily explorations as I did when we went to Greece in the summer of 2007 (for reasons beyond me the Greek photo albums aren’t always visible in FireFox). I’m going to be posting every little detail before, during, and after our time in Italy as a personal record for D and I of this awesome adventure in our lives and if someone with an equal love for all things Italian cares to come along for the ride on this blog then we’ll be thrilled to have you!

Oh. My. Gosh. We’re going to Italy.

Note to self: Remember to breath. There you go. In. Out. In. Out.

]]> http://www.anitasblog.com/la-vita-dolce-buckos-la-vita-dolce/feed/ 0 http://www.anitasblog.com/due-grandi-cuochi-unici/ http://www.anitasblog.com/due-grandi-cuochi-unici/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:42:41 +0000 Anita http://www.anitasblog.com/?p=596 What. A. Great. Evening. Tonight our Rakestraw, our local independent bookstore hosted an incredible evening that brought together chefs Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and Joey Altman. While known nationally Joey is best known in the Bay area for... Don't stop now...keep reading!