I was happy enough to travel five times to Italy.
I visited Tuscany, the Po large valley and Milan.
I visited Verona, where Romeo and Juliette have lived and died.
At the time I thought I would come back to visit Venice.
I spent days in Firenze and Sienna, strolling in the sunny narrow and noisy streets of these cities.
The following trip allowed me to spend a week-end in Napoli.
I visited the romantic island of Capri and the extraordinary archeological site of Pompeii.
I drank "limoncello" - a liquor made out of lemon" and "granita"- a sorbet made of peeled ice and fruit syrup.
In the nineties, then, I spent two weeks on vacation in the far south of Italy, in the Apulia region, nearby the city of Otrento.
I spent hours in the sea water thoroughly learning what farniente meant.
I assume you know what "farniente" means. No?
'Il dolce far niente' means the sweet idleness, sweet doing nothing.
Four years ago I had a week long bike trip throughout Tuscany - a rather hilly region with fantastic viewpoints on vineyard landscapes.
My best memory of this trip is Certaldo.
Have you ever heard of Boccace?
"The Decameron", a book he wrote around 1350 encompasses 100 tales and is considered as a masterpiece of Italian Classic Literature.
My last visit to Italy was two years ago and it was to Rome where I spent a mild September week-end visiting different areas of the city.
The ruins of the antique Rome and the Vatican city apart, I was most impressed by the narrow and highly colored streets of the Renaissance area.
I especially remember of the Flowers Place (Piazza dei Fiori) where I learnt from his statue who was Giordano Bruno and why he was sentenced to be burned on a stake.
Maybe you will ask me, "And now where do you want to go?"
October 2013
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