Our Excellent Italian Adventure – Final

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 minutes.
We never got to see any of London today due to time constraints. I don’t think that seeing a lot of Heathrow Airport really counts.

In many ways, this Adventure has been very different from all of our previous trips. The main difference of course is that we were travelling with Liz and Pete. The other significant difference – for me only – was the inclusion of my Dell Pocket PC. More on that later.

For virtually all of the trip, we got along pretty well with Liz and Peter and I can say honestly that having them along on this trip was a positive aspect of the trip. If we had to make the same decision again, we would invite them along on the trip again without hesitation.

However, there were aspects of traveling with two other people that we had to deal with. The major issue was that with more people involved in any decisions, it sometimes is a compromise as to what we would do daily. This is to be expected as we were all equal partners in the trip and everyone had an equal say. There were a few times when Barb and I may have done some things slightly different if it was just the two of us but these times were quite infrequent and not an ongoing source of frustration.

While we have not explicitly asked them about it, we suspect that both Liz and Peter would say that they would have preferred to have more days where we did less running around or even did nothing at all. I think that Barb and I have gotten used to a certain pace of our trips and usually know what to expect from each other so there are usually fewer surprises in this area.

I’m hoping that Liz or Peter can provide me with a final chapter of their own to give some of their perspectives on the trip for the blog.

As I said above, the other significant difference for this trip was the inclusion of my Dell Axim.

On the surface, this may seem like a purely technical issue but the real impact goes much deeper. This difference may only be noticeable to those who have been getting my Excellent Adventure updates from previous years. The two major differences were my ability to post pictures along with my updates and also the quantity of how much I was able to write.

Several people had posted comments asking: “When did you find the time to write all of this”? Having the Dell Pocket PC with me allowed me to write at many times of the day when I normally would be doing things like reading a book or watching TV.

By my estimate, I wrote about 4-5 times as much on this trip as on previous trips. All I can say is that what I wrote on this trip is the amount of content that I have always wanted to write on previous trips but never could due to time constraints. Being able to type offline made all the difference.

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down

So, as we always do, we bring you our Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down on Our Excellent Italian Adventure:

Thumbs Up:

-Smoking. Regular readers will know that the smoking issue in Europe always makes my Thumbs Down list so why is it on my Thumbs Up side this time? The reason is that in virtually all restaurants and other indoor public places that we went to in Italy, there were no smoking signs and people were following this and not smoking.

-Desserts. I had always read that Italian restaurants often had a limited selection of desserts to offer customers. We had consistently read that to only expect something like Tiramisu and maybe some fresh seasonal fruits. Not so. Some of the best desserts that I have ever eaten were had on this trip. Still not up to the selection and quality of France and Germany but delicious nonetheless.

-Tuscany. Everything about Tuscany was like a picture postcard. Some of the experiences in the small towns around our villa will be remembered forever.

-Amalfi Coast. One of Barb’s favourites is the boat ride along the Amalfi Coast from Positano to the town of Amalfi.

-Costs. So many people have told us how expensive Italy is. Having been to several European countries we can tell you that Italy is one of the cheapest. Perhaps only slightly more expensive than Spain, we found France and Germany to be more expensive (especially France). Britain is in a league all of its own as far as high costs go. The conversion to Pounds from Canadian dollars makes a huge difference.

Thumbs Down:

-Out of Order. Far too many times we found things in Italy to be out of order, completely broken, or just not working properly in some way. This was an ongoing source of frustration that we had not experienced in most other countries that we had been to.

-Weather. OK, this isn’t something that we can blame on Italy but we had some bad weather in Sorrento and a few days in Rome. The trip out to Lake Como wasn’t nearly as good as it could have been if we had had clear, sunny weather that day instead of a misty day where we couldn’t see across the lake very well. Luckily, the sun started to shine as soon as we got to Tuscany and we had no more rain after that.

-Driving too much. Driving along the narrow, winding roads throughout Tuscany was physically draining. I also think that we just drove a bit too much on many days which also made some days less fun.

-Poor road signs. Many, many times we got lost while driving in Italy and it was almost always due to poor highway road signs. In some cases, a turnoff sign was completely missing and we drove around town for a while trying to find our way back on the highway.

That’s all from me for this year. I hope that everyone enjoyed coming along on our Italian Adventure with us.

We already have plans underway for our Excellent Adventures for 2006 and have also begun talking about 2007. “The Making Of” updates for both of those will appear on my blog as they develop.

The photos from this tip can be seen on my photo website here.

Baden