Ciào! Benvenuto! Saluti! And other Italian greetings!
Welcome to this digital archive, a
web scrapbook about Glen and Lisa's 17 days in Italy on a 2007 tour, "The Best of
Italy" with Rick Steves' Europe
Through the Back Door.
Although we have previously traveled
to Peru, Mexico, Ireland, and England, this was our first commercially arranged tour.
We had concerns about traveling with a group, but they all turned out
to be unfounded. Our group members were amazingly congenial and
it would be hard to imagine a better random mix of
people! Evening meals that were scheduled to be on our own often
became group events because we all enjoyed each others' company
And
Karin, our guide, arranged an
excellent mix of group vs personal time. As a bonus, we didn't have to figure out transportation on our own, find our own way in
unfamiliar territory hunting for lodging, or rely solely on our own
very limited knowledge of the local language and customs.
Even
though we received our Italy 2007 book months ahead of time, life being what
it is, we barely got started reading and digesting it before departing
for Italy. Fortunately, traveling via the wonderful Heidebloem bus
gave time for Karin to prime us well,
filling us in with entertaining, important and useful information
before arriving at each destination. Plus, we had time enough so that
we could read up on details of particular interest to us before we
arrived at the next stop. Between Karin and the
Rick Steves
guidebook, we were well prepared for each stop and felt like we got the most out of our trip.
This trip changed how we view the world. Even the midwest snow looked
different this winter... Our 'David' is rather shorter and stockier than Florence's, but
Glen is no Michelangelo and our snow isn't nearly so fine as even flawed Carrara marble, so we had to
make do. We took about 2000 photos on this trip,
plus we
collected several hundred more from other group members to help create
a DVD video slide show commemorating the trip. That collection was cut down
drastically to make the 90 minute video, and reduced
even more for this scrapbook while still trying to do the trip justice.
This is our first attempt at a website and we found it difficult to capture
the spirit of the trip with static pictures.
Consequently, each page also includes a viewer that allows you to
watch the part of our video slide show for that location, set
to music that seemed apropos to the locale.
Click below to view the 3:01 introduction to "The Best of Italy".
