Arrivederci!

These are my shoes* for our upcoming trip to Italy. We will be in Italy for 29 days. Twenty-nine days! In Italy. Did I mention we’re going to Italy? I was only going to take one pair of shoes, but after kibitzing with several seasoned travelers, they have convinced me to take two pair: one for walking around cities and one for hiking and roaming on more rigorous paths. Paths such as those found in Cinque Terre, one of the many places we plan to visit. It is my hope that I will blog my way around Italy, when we are able to find a WIFI connection or an Internet cafe.

In a nutshell, we plan to visit: Rome, Sorrento, Pompeii, Naples, Tuscany (and all of the towns and villages in the area, i.e., Pisa, Lucca, San Gimignano, Siena . . . .), Florence, Venice, and end with a several day stay in Cinque Terre before flying out of Milan. While in Tuscany, we'll be staying for a week in a farmhouse, La Collina Tuscany, that Howard found on Craig’s List. Here's the little apartment farmhouse we'll be staying in (just pinch me now):

We’ve already started packing and have a list of “things to take,” although we’ll see if everything makes the cut once we actually begin putting things in our suitcases. Our goal is to pack light, wear the same clothes over and over, and to take a lot of photographs. We’ll see how successful we are.

We leave the first week of October, two days after the art retreat, Art and Soul, concludes. Yikes Almighty! I have a lot to do during the next couple of weeks . . . .

*A note about my shoes: My red shoes are a pair of trusty old Keen's that I've had for a while. The black beauties are a pair of shoes I recently purchased with our trip in mind. They are a brand I had never heard of, Romika, but they are like wearing comfortable, broken in slippers - now that's my kind of shoe!