We haven't done much traveling lately, so Mic and I decided to go to Northern Italy for a long weekend.   While it was a very nice trip, it certainly turned out to be one of the most problematic of our getaways.  Our flight landed on time and we picked up the rental car without incident, but it went downhill from there.  We realized we would be checking into our hotel after hours so we called to arrange for pickup of the key. We were given brief instructions which were supposed to be followed up by a text message with more detail. Sadly, message was never received. We arrived at the office but could not find the key.  Not that we had much opportunity to look around as there was a security guard (who did not speak English) who clearly did not like us looking around the closed office perimeter. No keys, no cell phone number, no directions, no one to turn to for help.  With no other option, we found another hotel for the night ...

It's finally time to go to Amsterdam.  I've been looking forward to this trip because I lived in Holland in the late 80's.  Last year I was going to move to either Holland or Belgium, but since the move was in November, I thought about how cold it would be.  I opted to start my adventure in a warmer climate, so I came to Malta instead.  Living in that area is most certainly still on my to do list.  I checked the weather forecast and it looked chilly, so I brought a jacket.   Sadly, I should have brought a parka because it was cold, windy and rainy the whole week!  We landed and hopped on the train.  The train station was attached to the airport, so it was by far the easiest transport we've had.  We were talking about what we were going to do after checking into our hotel when a man 2 seats up turned around and glared at us.  We looked at him like WTF?  He then looked up at the silence sticker...

There was a record convention in Bologna that Mic was going to, so I decided to join him.  How could I pass it up when air fare was only €49 round trip?   The first morning I signed up for a cooking class.  I learned how to make pasta from scratch and it was unbelievably easy. The school was actually a restaurant, with classes in the basement.  When I went in, there were 3 people cooking away.  They signed up for an all morning course which included making the pasta and several different sauces.  I would have done that one had I seen it.  As it was, I had a chef to myself.  Basically you take flour, make a well in the middle and crack two eggs into it.  You slowly pull in more and more flour until it's all one ball of dough.  Now the hard work starts.  You have to fold it over and over and over and over.  Next step is to spread it out using your finger tips and the heal of...

I was excited to visit Rome again, if for no other reason than to see if my memory of being there in the 80's matched what it was like today.  The first day we decided to go to the US Navy base in Naples.  I wanted to show Mic, who is Danish, what a US base is like and of course, to shop at the commissary and BX.  We bought the tickets the night before and the agent spent a bit of time finding us both the morning and evening high speed trains, about an hour each way.  The regular train was just over 2.5 hours.  We had to be in Naples at a certain time to catch the military shuttle to the base, so we got up at the crack of dawn and headed out.  Once at the central station in Rome, we looked on the board, but couldn't find our train.  We finally asked an agent who told us that train left an hour ago.  How stupid could we be, we both looked at the ticket which clearly said departure 0730 AM.  It was now ...