After much consideration, both by me and several of my coworkers, the winner for the first Italy Logue photo contest has been decided. It was a difficult choice, as all the photographs submitted are excellent and capture something special about Italy - but in the end, only one winner could be chosen. So, congratulations to Francesca M., who took the winning shot in Venice!
Francesca’s photograph was taken on a quiet Venetian canal in October 2006, and Francesca says about the photo:
It’s probably my favorite photo from Italy because I absolutely loved Venice! I expected to hate it, or maybe I just had really low expectations because I’d heard/read so many negative things about it. But I fell in love with the city and wish we’d planned to spend more time there on that trip.
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Sometimes when you’re looking for a hotel in Italy, the only things you care about are where the hotel is and how much it costs. Heck, most of the time you probably only care about how much it costs! But then sometimes you’ve got your heart set on one place in particular - you’ve read about a specific hotel, and you really want to stay there. What you don’t have is the hotel’s website, only a name, so you figure you’re stuck. Well, you’re not.
At the Italy Logue we’ve just introduced a new set …
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It’s now just about a week since I returned to the US from my six-week trip to Italy, and although the first couple of days were fine - little to no jetlag, getting reacquainted with my cats, teaching the cafe around the corner how to make a marocchino - things took a decidedly downward turn on Sunday. I was on my way to pick up the husband from his flight, when I realized that my usual post-trip head-cold seemed to be coming on. But by the time I’d retrieved him at the airport and was driving home, the head-cold had …
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You know that devilish trick that Cinnabon has in American malls of pumping its sickly sweet scent into the corridor outside the shop, so that anyone within a 100-foot radius is compelled to follow the smell to the source and then, before you know it, you’ve got a giant Cinnabon in your clutches and halfway down your gullet? You know that feeling? Where a smell is so intoxicating that it makes you do things? That, my friends, is the effect that the Florence leather market has on me. If I found out they’re spraying leather scent at nose-height in the street, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’ll admit that I have an addiction to shoes and purses, so traveling in Italy is almost always dangerous for me (not to mention my bank account). On my last trip to Italy I had scheduled my visit to Florence near the end of my trip, and prior to arriving in Florence every time I would look twice at a new purse or pair of boots I’d say, “No, no - wait until Florence.” And I did. I waited. And then I got to Florence, and - completely accidentally - my path from the train station to my hostel went straight through the heart of the leather market. I swear, I didn’t mean it to happen, but you can see how I’m so powerless to the leather market that even I don’t realize it.
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Here’s another in the Italy Q&A series. It’s from Mac, who says:
I will be traveling with my husband, 16 year old son and 14 year old daughter in June. We will be spending most of our time between Florence, some Tuscan hill towns, and Cinque Terre. Do you have any suggestions about how to keep our teenagers happy on this trip? We will be taking trains and buses for transportation. Also, if you have any suggestions about lodging that would be appreciated.
Thanks for the email, Mac! Keeping kids entertained while traveling depends largely on the kinds of travelers they are in general, and the kinds of things that interest them. If you’ve taken your kids on trips before and they’re relatively good travelers, then Italy shouldn’t be a problem for them. There’s plenty here that’s interesting to people of all ages, from food to fashion to scenery. And if they’re tolerant of the occasional art gallery or museum - as long as things like shopping and gelato are sprinkled liberally in as well - then you probably don’t have anything to worry about.
Having said that, most of Italy’s bigger tourist destinations are getting better about providing parents with new ways to help translate all this important stuff they’re seeing into words even the youngest of travelers can understand. Florence, for instance, partnered with Disney Publishing Italia last summer to create essentially a “Disney Guide to Florence.” It featured Donald Duck and family romping through Florence’s main attractions, explaining them in a way that young kids can understand and appreciate. When I was in Florence recently I picked one up, but all they have left now is the Italian version (it was completely free, and incredibly popular). I don’t know if they have plans to reprint it for the upcoming summer tourist season, and I’m not sure if it’s targeted at an audience that’s really too young for your kids’ ages, but when you swing into a tourist information office in Florence you might ask about it anyway. And, in general, I’d suggest that in whatever city or town you visit you find the local TI (tourist information) and ask what resources and guides they have for teenagers.
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It’s time for another Italy Q&A reply. Theresa asks:
We are planning a trip to Italy for the month of June and will need to rent a vehicle for about 4 weeks. Maybe a van actally as we’re 4 adults & 2 young kids. Any reco’s? not sure what companies are good or what a fair daily rate to expect.
Thanks for the note, Theresa! The short answer is that a fair daily rate is the one that seems to be what everyone is charging at any given moment - but it’s true. Because the price of gasoline is going up steadily, the cost of renting a car is as well. Your best bet is to start shopping around for prices now and comparing different companies to get an idea of what the “going rate” is, and then pouncing on something when you find a lower price.
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Some Italian news for your Sunday reading pleasure:
Apparently the wine you drink can offer a clue to your sexual identity. Who knew?
Say it isn’t so - are they really going to start charging for the Roman Forum?
There are museums everywhere you look in Rome, and even some places you don’t.
My bank account is thankful I didn’t see this list of designer outlets in Italy until after I got back home.
Venice’s bell tower is getting a new titanium belt.
Heaven forbid you get sick in Italy, but if you do here’s …
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For this Italy photo of the week, we’re in Florence:
Ordinarily, the Piazza della Signoria (pictured here) is one of those places that Italian decorum dictates should not be thought of as a place to sit around or sunbathe. This grand piazza is always great for people watching, but the few uniformed police officers who regularly patrol it should, if they’re strictly following orders, be telling these loungers to move along. But they weren’t. On this trip I spent four days in Florence, and I never saw people lounging around like this except on the occasion when I …
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Venice is an ideal city to walk in, but even the most dedicated walkers will probably want to use the famous bus-boats at some point during their trip. They’re incredibly easy to use, mainly because there are very few lines to keep track of in Venice proper, and only a couple areas where they run anyway. But here’s a few things to know when you’re trying to use public transportation in Venice, including information about how to get from the Marco Polo Venice Airport into Venice itself.
Vaporetto? Traghetto? Gondola? What’s in a name?
All the terms listed above are floating thingies (yes, that’s a technical term), and they’re all in Venice. But that’s almost where the similarity ends:
Vaporetto - These are the big bus-boats which have regular routes along, for instance, the Grand Canal and from Venice to Murano to Burano, etc. Even if you’re walking around the city most of the time, it’s likely you’ll ride a vaporetto now and then during your stay.
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