Category: Blog

Using maps to navigate your way around a large and unfamiliar city can be both enlightening and misleading, sometimes simultaneously. I’d pored over several maps studiously in the weeks leading up to our trip and felt confident about tackling Rome on foot. I’m a good map reader, have a strong sense of direction once I’m oriented and don’t panic if we do get turned around a bit. But I have to reluctantly admit that on occasion Rome, and Italy in general, bamboozled me. Not completely, and we always got where we were going. Eventually. It took me a couple days to realize what the problem was. Two things, really. One, as far as I could tell there’s hardly a street in the whole damn country that goes in a straight line for more than a couple of blocks. And two, every time a street takes the slightest bend, even though you’re still on the same freaking street, it now sports a different name. Think you’re on Via Whatchamacallit? Maybe you were until you crossed that last intersection. Now you’re on Via Somethingelse, sucker, and good luck to you because a few blocks from here it’s going to be Via Somethingentirelydifferentnow.

I know what the younger crowd will say (that’s anyone under my age): Get a smartphone, gramps. Well, number one, I don’t believe in them and number two, I saw plenty of folks standing on street corners tapping and swiping away at their phones, pointing in different directions and arguing with one another and generally looking every bit as confused as we did on occasion. So I’ll stick with my map, thank you. Actually, my wife has an even better approach. She walks fearlessly up to anyone who looks like a local and simply asks for directions. Frankly I’d rather wander around sightseeing (my euphemism for being lost) for an hour than ever ask someone, but it usually works for her. Imagine that.

Continue reading “A TRIP TO ITALY. ROME, PART TWO: THE VATICAN” →

Italia. Where to begin? At the beginning of course, but what beginning would that be? The first day of the trip itself, or do I go all the way back to when the idea of visiting Italy first glimmered in my brain? And who knows when that truly happened? Certainly the thought had been percolating somewhere in those vast empty spaces inside my head for many years, if not decades, so long that I really can’t say where or how the notion first took root. I claim no Italian blood on either side of my family, yet I’ve always felt drawn to Italian art, food, history, language, music, and particularly football. Yes, that’s right, soccer to Americans.

I first fell in love with Italian soccer in the mid 1990’s and I’m still not sure why. Is it that much better than English or German or Brazilian football? No, but it is different to my eyes. Some combination of their style of play, the passion on display, the history and winning tradition of Italy on the world soccer stage and who knows what other intangibles all contribute to my love of calcio, the Italian name for soccer.

What does this have to do with choosing to travel to Italy? Nothing, other than to illustrate just how mysterious the whole process is of what draws us to one thing and not another. Of course, if I could explain or understand all this in some rational, scientific manner it might lose the allure that attracted me in the first place. Perhaps, in this case, the unexamined life (or notion) is not only worth living, but the better option.

So by whatever means you come to Italy, you must come to Rome. All roads lead there, right? To visit Italy without seeing Rome would be like visiting England without London, or France without Paris. We flew into Rome and spent three days there, which is only scratching the surface of the Eternal City, but that gives us good reason to go back some day.

Continue reading “A TRIP TO ITALY. ROME: PART ONE” →

(Entering Carlsbad Caverns National Park)

This time we’re visiting two of New Mexico’s iconic landmarks and attractions, Carlsbad Caverns National Park and White Sands National Monument.

(White Sands National Monument)

One thing you quickly discover while driving around New Mexico are the vast distances involved traveling from one point of interest to the next. Case in point was this day of our Southwest trip. We left Santa Fe in the north-central portion of the state early in the morning, heading south toward Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico’s extreme southeast quadrant. In fact the Caverns are located mere miles from the Texas border.

(That’s a big hole in the ground – entering the main cave complex at Carlsbad)

Continue reading “Road Trip 2016 Carlsbad Caverns National Park and White Sands National Monument” →