Our Italy Travels - a beginning

[I began this online travel journal in the winter of 2005, a year of great changes for both of us. Since we enjoyed several rather spectacular trips to Italy in the years preceding I wanted to post those as well. Those posts can be found in their respective years in the archives.]

So, to begin:  in June of 1994 Susie and I jumped off the deep end of travel, so to speak. For our first trip abroad together we decided to fly to Europe, rent a car, rent not one but two houses, drive around for about a month, experiencing what it might be like for two strangers living in a strange land. For nearly half of that time we were joined by Susie's brother Dick and his wife Dorothy, avid travelers to Europe also willing to try out this idea of tourists living abroad.

We flew into Zurich, rented our car (a VW Passat), headed south and drove the back roads over the Italian Alps, dodging insane motorcyclists, to the Italian city of Merano, staying at the Castel Freiburg perched on one of the hills overlooking the valley, then down to Niccone in Umbria for a a week, and on to Vagliagli just north of Siena for two weeks where Dick and Dorothy joined us from Rome. Susie and I ended our trip in Bellagio on Lake Como for the final few days in Italy before crossing back into Switzerland. Whew! That's a mouthful of four weeks of travel crammed into one long sentence.

Over 5,000 kilometers of incredible food, wonderful wines and an experience that defined the very concept of travel for the two of us and set the tone for every trip we've taken since.

Join me on our trips to Italy beginning in the late 1990s. . .

outside a bar along Lake Trasimeno, near where the Carthaginians defeated a Roman army so long ago