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After the Storm
Hey friends, sorry for going quiet on you.
September has brought lots of rain to our part of Spain, which doesn’t agree with our internet service. Don’t ask me why. It’s a broadband connection, after all, and this is the 21st century, and you’d think a bit of rain wouldn’t be a big deal. But it must be, because more often than makes sense we’ve been stuck inside without our internets to keep us busy. There are still toe prints on the walls from one afternoon when I tried to hang with the gecko camped on the dining room ceiling.
And then there was the little matter of finding a place to live…which took days and days and is a saga in and of itself that makes the mind wobble. That small matter is sorted. Kinda. We’re homeless as of October 3rd but for our rented post box and our rented storage unit and our little Peugeot. Which sounds scary, but it’s not. Because instead of continuing the hard slog of finding a house to rent in Spain for a few months, we’ve found apartments to rent for a week or two in a country I’ve mooned about my whole life: Italy.
Whoot!
Our itinerary looks roughly like this:
October 5th – October 10th: drive to Aix-en-Provence for a couple days, maybe spend a night or two along the Italian Riviera unless we decide to explore Turin instead. (I’d put my money on the Italian Riviera, if I were a betting person.)
October 10th – October 17th: Lucca and the upper part of Tuscany, including Florence. (Swoon, swoon – glorious Florence.)
October 17th – October 31st: Lake Como, Milan, Verona
November 1st-November 17th: Ferrara, Padua, Bologna.
What we do after that is up in the air. I refuse to get a brain wedgie about the unkonwns, to approach them like a cliff. I’m more concerned about the arrival of the Italian-English dictionary I ordered from Amazon UK. Lordy, I hope it arrives in time, because I don’t know a lick of Italian, neither verbal nor gesture-al.
Which leads me to propose a swap that I hope all parties can live with. I’d really like to share this trip with you. I’d really like for you to be in Italy with me, albeit vicariously. And for a spell, I’d like to focus more on the business of experiencing the flow of life than the doubts that disrupt it. Because…why not?
Are you game?
You can let me know by offering one of the following:
Tips on any of the above cities/places if you have firsthand experience with them.
A glimpse of what you would do and what you would want, if this trip were your trip.
Questions you might ask yourself if you were a self-employed someone embracing a lifestyle that’s less dependent upon location.
On that note I leave us with the first stanza of a song better known for it’s refrain, especially if you watched a lot of Bugs Bunny cartoons as a kid.
First, the Neopolitan lyrics of O’ Sole Mio:
Che bella cosa e’ na giornata ‘e sole / n’aria serena doppo na tempesta!/ Pe’ ll’aria fresca pare già na festa/ Che beela cosa e’ na giornata ‘e sol.
Plain English translation:
What a beautiful thing is a sunny day / The air is serene after a storm / The air’s so fresh that it already feels like a celebration / What a beautiful thing is a sunny day.