Bikers and Fish

While not exactly visible from this photo, there was a biker rally in San Benedetto.  We enjoyed hanging out with them, and they even helped us order from the fish shack pictured below - it's the small building with the blue and white striped awning.  Fish stuff olives (yum!), veggies, calamari and shrimp - doesn't get any better than that!  The refurbished yellow VW is a mobile DJ, spinning LPs with party music - very fun!

Sunrise in San Benedetto del Tronto

San Benedetto del Tronto is a beautiful beach town!  In the middle of the country on the Adriatic coast, we found very friendly people, expansive beaches, and lots of families - this is a must-do seaside escape.

We arrived Saturday after a longer than planned drive (turned out to be 4 1/2 hours from Rome's airport) - and as a bonus, it was a scenic drive that didn't make Anne whimper through the hillsides - no cliff drop offs because the Italians know how to build tunnels through mountains.  So grateful!

Anne kept her streak of great hotel selections in tact with a find on the beach.  Below is a view of our balcony at sunrise.  We were quite pleasantly surprised to find a private balcony with a hot tub.  We're watching dolphins right now!

The town has an interesting feel.  It is like many of the east coast beach towns, but as it is not prime european vacation season yet, so we're enjoying the solitude of it all.  Great for us, may not for the local economy.

Today we're off to San Marino, a small independent country located in northwestern Italy.  We didn't know there were two countries within Italy's border, the Vatican and San Marino.

Charlotte, NC Layover Fun!

Using frequent flyer miles always creates unintended fun - forcing us to visit a city we probably wouldn't otherwise put on our itinerary.  This time, Charlotte NC became our intention.  With a 12 hour layover, we stopped in a hotel and visited the NASCAR museum and even better, a kitchen that transitions folks from incarceration to working.

So...even though neither of us has any history watching NASCAR, we did connect with many of the names and there were lots of cars and interesting items.  Part of the museum provided a history of NASCAR's start:  what else, running from the cops to sell moonshine!

On our way between the museum and the kitchen, we came upon the annual street fair, Speed Street, NASCAR themed.  Anne has a true disdain for the uninspiring gecko pictured below!  It was not possible for her to deflate it, but she enjoyed thinking about it.

And finally, we grabbed lunch at a very highly rated kitchen that specialized in Southern cooking and soul food - benefiting those who are on their way to doing good.  While we didn't eat it all, what we did enjoy was fabulous!

We are back to the airport in a few and off to Rome.  Ciao!

The big loop through Italy

The next big adventure with my sweetheart is two weeks in Italy.  This trip discards the hustle and bustle of our favorite cities, and takes us straight to remote towns, including Gimigliano, a town of 200, where Anne's grandfather was born and raised. We are living out the desire to research family history and learn a bit more about the area that is the genesis of the Galanti family.  Stay tuned for details.

As for the Itinerary, we arrive in Rome and do a big loop on the map below:

• The Adriatic Sea, staying at San Benedetto for 3 nights.  
• The mountains to Ascoli Piceno for two nights, near Gimigliano
• A national park area near Vieste for 2 nights
• One night in Matera to break up the travel
• Four nights in Sorrento, the area near Naples and Positano
• A final night in Rome with time to hit all the sites again 

It is about 850 miles, broken up over 14 days.  Should give us a great view of the parts of Italy we have not explored.  Ciao!

On the last flight to home

Anne and I are on the last flight from Dallas to Sacramento and I am looking forward to seeing the house and my checking out the garden and yard to see what the 107 degree heat has done to it.  I have been gone almost 5 weeks.  Hard to believe it has been that long, but when I think about places like Istanbul, it seems like much longer than 5 weeks since I was there.  It has been quite a trip.   I visited 9 countries, put nearly 2,000 miles on the rental car and am going to need to get used to people speaking English again.  It's been a while since I understood what the majority of people were saying.

Many, many thanks to my wonderful wife Anne.  She understood this is a trip I have wanted to take for a very long time.  She was not only supportive of me going, she was a push to get me to do this.  I would have preferred if she could have been there for the whole thing, but certainly enjoyed the last few weeks and all the wonderful hotels she set me up at.

Now, back to reality.  I am excited to start my new consulting venture - the future is so very bright.

Planes, trains and....Uber?

Well, we sadly started the long trek back home today.  Being in the south of France, living in a city without a major hub and using frequent flyer tickets all lined up to give us 4 flights to make it home.  Marseille to Paris, Paris to JFK (overnight in hotel), JFK to Dallas and Dallas to Sacramento.  The tickets were basically free, so it's hard to complain.  It would have been 3 flights no matter what.  The surprise came when we headed to the airport this morning.

We all have different stress points and Anne has learned leaving a foreign country is one of mine.  I travel so much internationally and have had so many issues I always get to the airport 2 hours ahead minimum.  She offered up to leave the hotel early before I could bring up the subject, so I figured we were good.  Drive was fine and we pulled into the Marseille airport area just over 2 hours ahead and found about a 2 mile backup out the front entrance to the airport.  We had heard that taxi drivers were protesting Uber drivers in Paris, but apparently they moved to Marseille and were blocking the entrance to the airport.  See the CNN article about Paris below.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/25/europe/france-paris-uberpop-protests/

Here was Anne's cell phone shot as we passed through the protest line.

If we missed the first flight, it was going to be a REALLY bad and long weekend.  You are basically standby on whatever is available and that can be a rough trip home.  I was fortunately able to squeeze in at the end of the line, by driving on the shoulder and forcing my way in the end.  I felt a little bad, but we would have missed the flight otherwise and a month of driving in Europe has honed my aggressive driving skills.  After slowly crawling through the crowd of taxi drivers blocking the way, we were there in about 45 minutes (just to get into the airport drive).  We dropped the car and were at the area to check in 1.5 hours before our flight, so we figured we were good.  Not so fast, we forgot we were in France.  There were 5 people checking in the long line of flyers, and all of a sudden, 4 of them left for about half an hour.  We waited in that line nearly an hour before we got checked in.  Fortunately we made the flight (barely) and are in Paris airport waiting for our flight to the US.    To quote Yogi Berra, "it isn't over, until it's over", but we are hopeful that things will be smoother from here.

Le Musee Departemental Aries Antique

We walked over to the local natural history museum and it was a very interesting presentation.  The focus of the museum is on the evolution of Arles.  One of the key objects was a barge from Roman times (BC).  They had discovered it about a decade ago in sediment in the river and went to great effort to recover it and all the materials like it.

View from the end of the barge, it was very large and is over

2,000 years old.  Pots along the side were from the same discovery.

Some of the recovered Roman fascia.  This was one of the most emotional ones.

Sketch of the Amphitheater from the 1400's.  After the fall of Rome, the

amphitheater had about 150 homes move inside for protection.