Living a Dream

On an unseasonably warm weekend in late January, Jenna and I ventured off to Torino, Italy. It might sound familiar as the host city of the 2006 olympics, although you would've heard of it as Turin because we're Americans and we don't pronounce things the way they're supposed to be pronounced. For some details on the trip and the impressions of Torino, I'll direct you here . It's a 7-things-you-should-know article I wrote over on Robot Butt, which is also a ridiculous site you should check out. So here I'll put a few things and a few photos. Torino has a few big attractions, including a museum of cinema, an Egyptian museum, and a mind-blowing landscape, but they have a ton of smaller attractions too. The Egyptian museum, from our experience, was a complete dud. Most of it was under construction and the stuff that was available was nothing to write home about. Apparently we're in the minority in that opinion because it's wildly popular on sites ...

Ever heard of Lecco? No, you haven't. We only heard of it because it was the destination of a regional train in Milan. We secondarily heard of it because it's the 2nd biggest town on Lake Como, where we'd been a couple weeks earlier. But this was January, and the same reasoning held up as when we went to Como; if it's January and it's warm enough to get by in a long-sleeve tee, you'd best get outside and enjoy it. So we booked a train to Lecco for the day and decided to do some hiking. It was wonderful. First view of Lecco The town itself was very similar to other towns we'd been to. It had a main walking street with loads of shops, butchers, cheeseries, and high-end clothing retailers. It had a waterfront park area where folks would stroll for what seemed like hours on end. It had all you might want, and then it also had a weirdly large number of teens, but we'll get back to that. We started toward the nearest mountain, knowing that there...

Hi. I haven't updated myself in a few weeks and I am choosing to blame it on my return to these United States of America. Things are different, but not that much different. Have you ever moved? More, have you ever moved back to a place you previously lived? It's a weird experience and it's hard to describe, but if you've done it, I'll see if what I'm feeling matches up with what you felt. Somehow, some way, it feels like we were never gone. Over the span of September 3, 2014 until June 3 2015, Jenna and I took about 9,000 photos. We took those photos in 16 countries, although it was primarily in Italy, where we visited 18 out of 20 provinces. We interacted with native speakers of approximately 20 languages and countless dialects. Thanks to the Eurozone we only dealt in four currencies. By plane, train, and 3-times-rented-car (but not counting work-commutes and travel within Milan) we traveled an approximate 32,000 miles. Add in distance walked and you have...

And the Machine, am I right?? But seriously, if you want jokes, that's cool. I'm gonna tell you about the city of Florence real quick, and it's one of my favorite cities in Europe/the world (which really only consists of Europe and like 1/8 of the US because that's all I've seen). Florence, more-so than London, New York, Paris, or anywhere, is the city of art. Oh, you "don't like art"? There are still museums full of stuff you'd like in Florence - it's out of control. According to Tripadvisor there are 83 museums in Florence, and the majority are in an area of about 1 square mile. It's crazy. We skipped out on the Uffizi Gallery, known as one of the world's best (and home of the Birth of Venus by Botticelli), because of the long lines and because I'd been there before and was overwhelmed by the size and underwhelmed by the variety for long stretches. We opted for a trip to the Bargello Museum, which was about 5 euro and had wo...

No. I did not see George Clooney, nor do I know where his house is. That's the first (and usually only) question that gets asked by Americans about Lake Como. The reason he "lives" there though is that it's insanely beautiful and simultaneously close to and far from the rest of the world. It's a 40 minute train from Milan for about 3 euros per person, and once you get there you'll see towns that seem to be only reachable by boat while others are just one more stop along the train route. So what I'm saying is that it's really nice. On an unseasonably warm January day, the two of us headed out to see what all the fuss was over, although I'd gone with Graham in 2012 and knew it was gorgeous. We arrived about 10:00 a.m. and began by stomping through the town of Como, which is pretty nice. It has a major medieval feel, with an old city-wall popping up in a few places and a couple of giant cathedrals. The main one, the Duomo (aka the Como Duomo, to p...

I was informed by my brother that the brief story I will now tell you doesn't sound real. I've mentioned before that if you thought it was too ridiculous to be real, it happens in Italy, and this latest one is no exception. In my opinion, the hardest part to believe is probably the next sentence I'm going to write. About a week ago, Jenna and I were out for a jog. We were on our way back to the apartment on the same route as always and we were just coming up to a crosswalk. It's a weird intersection where it doesn't seem that anyone actually has a stop-sign, but the two intersecting streets are both one-way, so it's not quite as dangerous as it could be in the states. We were coming jogging across the crosswalk and there was a car parked near the curb and kind of hanging-over into the crosswalk (an illegal parking job, if those exist in Italy - this is a country where cars regularly drive down the sidewalk to find the right parking spot). It actually appeare...

Hey Mrs. D. It's been a while, I know. I'd be lying if I said I thought about you often, and I have no idea if this letter will find you doing well or not, but it came to me as I was walking home from a lesson. An English lesson. In Italy, where I'm teaching English lessons as a form of making a living. I have a bit of a bone to pick with you, Mrs. D. It's nothing personal (although you told me I'd never be a good writer, and I'd be happy to write you a letter that really shows emotion and conveys a central theme about whether or not I can write a letter that shows emotion and conveys a central theme), I just think you did a disservice by pounding the rules of grammar into our heads to such an insane degree. Yes, I realize it was funny to have to write "To plus a verb is an infinitive" a crazy amount of times as punishment for misinterpreting a verb form while diagramming sentences. And yes, I realize that that's a fairly important rule. But I ...