Now that I have some spare time again after completing my Italy 2005 DVD*, I have been able to get some additional pictures put up on the web site. I’m always hesitant to put a lot of my pictures online because I have to compress…

As promised, here are the final comments by both Liz and Peter. …Baden From Liz: We’re finally home and have had a chance to catch up and get back into life in Vancouver. It’s taking a bit of getting used to as we find ourselves…

Update (Nov. 20, 2005): I have updated the link on this article to the larger selection of pictures that I have just uploaded. …Baden My current count of the pictures that I took from the trip to Italy is around 450. My brother Peter probably…

Finally. Just when we were expecting another delay to pop up for us, we were on our way and boarding our British Airways flight to Vancouver. As I write this final chapter of Our Excellent Italian Adventure, will be landing in Vancouver in about 90…

Around this point of our Italian Adventure, I expected to be wrapping up our story and telling you how great everything was. Unfortunately not so. A new chapter of Our Excellent Italian Adventure has unfolded which was unknown to us even 12 hours ago when…

Shopping for a Real Milan Experience Picking up from our last episode, we made it to the Milano Centrale train station without too many problems – other than sore arms from carrying all of the extra stuff that we had bought in Tuscany. Our taxi…

Back on the Road Again We finally ended up getting out of the villa on Wednesday after lazing around for most of the morning and early afternoon. By about 2:00 we decided to make a short drive around the neighbouring towns around our villa. We…

More Chianti, More Tuscany, More Everything As it’s Monday today, we were planning on picking up a few more of the things that we were looking to get for our kitchen in the way of food supplies. Having a kitchen in our villa allows us…

Half Way Point It’s Friday today and tomorrow will officially be the halfway point in our Excellent Italian Adventure. That also means that today will be our last full day in Sorrento and as a result, we all have a full day’s agenda ahead of…

Thirty-Two Stops to Sorrento To continue our story from last time, we made our train from Rome to Naples and had to connect to another train to get to our final destination: Sorrento. Sorrento is on the southern edge of the Bay of Naples and…

Speaking the Language As it is with any foreign country that you might visit, your ability to speak the language makes a big difference as to how you will enjoy the trip. Case in point: Barb and I have a passable command of French and…

It’s day 5 into our trip and I’m just overwhelmed by all the sights we have seen. I’ve never walked so much in my life but the feet are hanging in there – barely. One good thing about all this walking is all the extra…

Taking your Life in your Hands One of the (many) things that distinguishes European cities from where we live is often that they have cobblestone streets. Rome is a perfect example of this as pretty much all of the roads inside the city are cobblestone.…

Getting There is Half the Leg Room I was quite surprised that Barb was relatively disciplined in packing her suitcase. Unlike what Liz wrote in her previous article, Barb and I have never done a “dry run” when packing to see how full things will…

Welcome to Our Excellent Italian Adventure! Since there are a lot of new people reading our Adventures this year, I should probably give you some background as to how all of this started. In 1999 Barb and I travelled to New Zealand and the Cook…

This post by Liz will be the last of the “Making of an Excellent Adventure 2005” series. Part 1 of Our Excellent Italian Adventure begins tomorrow. …Baden It’s the day before departure as I reflect on the last couple of weeks. The panic didn’t set…

Of all the things that we have on our list to worry about when we get this close to our vacation, getting sick has to be pretty close to the top of that list. Today Barb was home from work, sick. By all indications, it’s…

I knew that all of this problem free trip planning was just too good to last. The first significant issue has arisen that has caused us to have some concerns about our travel plans. As we normally do when travelling to another country, we usually…

The lists are out. What list you may ask? Well it’s our travel preparation lists and we usually start using them a few weeks before we travel – a very visual sign that we’ll be going somewhere very soon. Our travel lists serve three functions:…

Vorrei avere un trattore per il pranzo. Translation (from Italian): I would like a tractor for dinner. Yes, these fine Italian phrases and many more like them will be spoken by us as we travel throughout Italy in a few short weeks. A few weeks…

I’m thinking that the term travelling light needs to be updated. For those of you who have been following along with our trip planning, you know that I’ve been planning on taking along some extra electronic equipment. For most of our previous trips, I’ve had…

Almost 6 weeks and counting. I can now admit that the whole Italy trip is beginning to become more and more of what we’re thinking about and talking about. After Labour Day (Sept. 5th), it will be the only thing that we’ll be thinking about.…