Oh No, Another Trip to Italy!

I planned a trip to Italy in 2016 after assuring everyone I knew, including Laura, that I did not want to go this year because of a lot of conflicting situations. There was a brief window of days available and I jumped right in. I actually asked her about two months ago where she would like to go. She said she would like to go back to the Amalfi Coast, staying in Sorrento and visiting Capri, the coast itself, Positano, Pompeii and Herculaneum. I then spent several weeks getting all that ready only to find her reading a post on Facebook from a friend of hers who is taking an artist group to Tuscany. She then said, much to my delight, that she wanted to return to Tuscany and even visit the artist group in the town of Radicofani which is just south of the val d'Orcia area of Tuscany instead of Sorento. I then planned a trip which became one of the boldest I ever planned.

It is very hard to visit Tuscany properly without driving. First of all it is difficult to pick out a base of operations. Second, you must get there without driving. Third, once you do that in order to see anything decent, you must drive. I chose Siena for several reasons. Although I had been there three times and Laura twice, I never stayed overnight. To truly experience a town you must stay at least one night. You just feel the mystery of the place in the darkness, smell the soot and smoke from the chimneys, and get lost amid the medieval streets. Also, Siena was big enough to allow for a lot of wandering, a lot of restaurants, and hotels. Also it was a good transportation hub for exploring Tuscany since I had NO INTENTION of driving anywhere. We decided on 4 days in Siena, 4 days in Florence, and then two days in Orvieto visiting with Franco Sala whom we missed the last time we were in Italy. Because the hotel I really wanted, the Palazzo Ravizza (rated number 3 out of 39 hotels by TripAdvisor) appeared to be fully booked (I assumed we booked too late for a lot of choices), I chose the Hotel Duomo which still appeared to be quite nice.

Then I had to figure out a way to see the rest of Tuscany, especially places I had never seen. I relied on Lidia and Luca who both graciously and wonderfully agreed to drive us around for two of the days in Siena. I also booked a taxi service to drive us to Siena from Rome Airport, and then on to Florence four days later, a very expensive proposition, but for a non driver, absolutely essential. I then booked our usual hotel in Orvieto, the Hotel Duomo (there are a million Hotel Duomos, LOL) and asked them to book a taxi to the Rome Airport for the trip home, a total of 10 days. A lot, a lot, a lot of money for taxis. To rent a car, however, would have cost just as much and caused me untold anxiety and gastro issues. I bit the bullet. While in Florence, we could see some of our favorite museums and Lidia promises a day out again with Sabrina and Giulio and dinner cooked by Giulio who is a chef at the Westin Excelsior in Florence. All set. Short trip, as we had decided last year. Trips seem to be longer and longer the older we get.

Suddenly without much reason I went back to look at Palazzo Ravizza and found they had a couple of rooms open. I did this on the bus getting to my teaching job in NYC, so spent a whole trip down there emailing with the hotel and texting with Laura. We now have the palazzo with a garden level room for two nights and a regular room for the other two. I cancelled Hotel Duomo. I felt really badly about since they had treated me very nicely, but the thought of spectacular Tuscan views from our room in a magnificent palazzo type hotel was overwhelming. It will be more costly, but I hope worth it.

While in Siena we will try to get west to Volterra, a place I spent time in with Lidia almost 15 years ago. Also we will try to get down to the val d'Orcia area to San Quricio, maybe Mt Amiata, and then Radicofani. Great material for TV shows.

So there it is, yet another trip to Italy and probably if all works out well a year's worth of Alan's Italy broadcasts.

Alan's Italy is Back on the Air..........Maybe

To all my loyal fans around the world all I can say is, as disappointed as many of you are, I am having an even worse time. The last broadcast was show # 117 back on October 9, 2015, almost 5 months ago. My engineer just told me to prepare for a show for next Friday evening, March 4. I spent yesterday and today trying very hard to get back into it. It was not easy having not only lost some (although as it turned out not much) interest, but also forgetting how to do some of the computer stuff on IPhoto. But as of this moment, I have a very nice show prepared Show # 118 - Montefioralle, the day we spent with Lidia, Sabrina, and Giulio showing around the stunning area of eastern Chianti. In fact I became so enthused that I actually had prepared 115 photos, way too much and spent the last hour paring that down considerably. Of course, I always have a very hard time dropping beautiful photos from a potential broadcast.

Now I wait. Next Friday I not so confidently place myself into the hands of my engineer who will probably be doing her first show in the new studio. Very, very scary!!!!! I am fully prepared to do the show, and then do it over again; that attitude is very unusually for me who always gets upset when I have to do a show over. I haven't even seen the new studio, but, again, I place myself in the hands of the person who has taken me this far - which is very far indeed. If it comes off successfully, I then must remember how to download to my computer and upload to Youtube. Gulp!!!

We shall see what happens but I also prepared for the next show # 119 which will focus on the day out in the heart of Chianti with Mary and Luca when they took us up the steep hill to the amazing town of Volpaia. We had a spectacular lunch made slightly less wonderful by the fact that my chronic gastro intestinal problems were bad that day. Still that show was quite nice ending up at Luca's and Mary's house and spending time with Luca marvelous daughter, Greta, who also took us back to Florence on the train. Then I still have two shows (which may become one) on two side trips from Varenna on Lake Como, a lunch several hundred feet above the town of Bellagio and a stroll along Lake Como to the tiny town of Fiumelatte which has a wonderful small waterfall on what is billed as the world's shortest river.

Then I would like to do two shows which I do not know if my audience will like. I would like to spend two shows talking about how to plan a trip to Italy and then how to actually navigate through the many difficult anxious aspects of actually taking such a trip. One of my followers, my friend Shawn from Chicago, loves the idea and even wants to contribute his own experiences with planning a trip. I wish other people would email me their thoughts. The show will not feature a lot of photos, but merely be me speaking directly at the camera using lists and some visuals. I have thought this for quite some time, but never actually did anything. Now I have the skeletal outline of such a series of shows. I hope that will be a public service to assist people who are thinking about taking a trip to Italy. Please let me hear from you at  alansitaly@gmail.com  Thanks!!!