Tag Archives: Italy
The 11 Rules of Traveling
1. Never eat at McDonalds You won’t get a bear burger (above) at McDonalds. You’re not Christmas shopping at the mall needing to quickly fuel up at the food court – you’re traveling. One of the primary joys of traveling is trying the local food, so why would you have food that you (hopefully) wouldn’t […]
American Cities in Italy
If you live in Rome and want to go to Siena, it’s necessary to change trains in a little town somewhere in the middle called Chiusi-Chianciano Terme. I get a cappuccino to still my train-rattled nerves and find myself back in the station, passing the time until my connection by reading Italian fairy tales. A […]
Undeliverable: Tragedies of the Italian Post Office
Greek monuments litter Italy at nearly the same rate as beggars and churches, but nothing serves as an icon to Greek Tragedy like the Italian post office. Government bureaucracy is a bad word in every country, but only in Italian do the syllables rise and fall with the singsong charm of a French guillotine. Burdened […]
The Patron Saint of Vernazza
When you’re traveling on a tight budget, one of the first things to go are the train tickets… paying for them that is. Now, you might think that this would cause a problem, mainly in being able to take the train, but when the country you’re train hopping in is Italy and the person in […]
Pisa: An Unsatisfying Erection (all that Viagra can’t do)
If you’ve done much traveling in Southern Europe you’re probably aware that the train station is generally the worst thing you’ll experience on your trip. In Pisa it’s the opposite, which doesn’t mean that the train station is nicer than those others, only that the rest of the city is so wretched as to make […]
An Officer, not a Gentleman
After spending eight months in Polignano a Mare, a pearl of a city buried deep in Italy’s heel, a combination of factors led me to make the move to that famous capital located squarely mid-calf, Rome. In the more than four months I’ve been here, I’ve often questioned my decision to move from a seaside […]
Adventures in Laundering
Far from the world of pizzas, pastas, and gelati I’ve been immersed in these last two weeks lies another, dirtier truth. While I’ve managed to shove it as far back into my wardrobe as I could, the truth is starting to smell. It’s high time I did my laundry, you see, and not only because […]
