Categories
Travel

Gelato and Cigarettes

Rome is a study in contrasts defined by monumental marble, miniature cars, horse carts, cripples, smokers and saints. A city of nearly three million represented by every race which draws about ten million tourists a year. A city where impeccably dressed men on motor scooters whizz past beggars and where gum spots collect on white […]

Categories
Community Travel

A Matter of Pride

I can’t say I’ve been many places as beautifully engineered and tended as Lugano. Also known as the “Italian” part of Switzerland it is built along the shore of Lake Lugano and on up the hill. The streets here are tidy and clean with granite curbs and nearly everything is landscaped and coiffed. Even the […]

Categories
Our Life Travel

Time Warp

We’ve been home for two weeks and I am continually shocked by the sameness of our town. It appears that virtually nothing has changed in a year and a half. With the exception of a rebuilt courthouse and a couple of new businesses, everything looks the same. It’s as if I woke from a dream […]

Categories
Travel

Repatriation Day

Today we cross the U.S. border for the first time since leaving in June, 2012. We’ll arrive back in the country of our birth tanned, ready and rested albeit a bit jet-lagged from a long day of travel. Our wonderful friends Jason and Haruka will have stocked our refrigerator with produce grown next door on […]

Categories
Travel

Laurens on Wanderlust and Milk

Last night I finished re-reading “A Far-Off Place” Laurens van der Posts’  1974 sequel to “A Story Like the Wind.” I felt it appropriate to read both novels in preparation for our own journey to Africa, given our recent move to Africa. Set in Africa, both stories explore the relationship between Francois Joubert, a French boy born […]