Postponing our Italian Holidays For a Year- Boo Hoo!

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Caroline

It’s been just over a month since I have written on the site, and blimey, doesn’t time fly! It seems just a week (well, okay 2 weeks ) ago that we had Christmas. I haven’t written anything since then as we’ve been really busy with our ‘business’ stuff.

Yum, Italian Ice Cream!

What do I mean by that? Well, we started to learn how to develop a ‘truly’ online business last September. Our idea was/is that if we can develop something that we can run from our laptops (or ipad – I’d love one of them) then we could run the business from anywhere in the world. For those of you who know us, you know that we like wandering around (not aimlessly, I hasten to add), in various countries, places and meeting the locals. Now, if you have a traditional business, or indeed an e commerce business online, if you go away for a couple of months, when you get back you don’t have any customers. So our challenge has been to overcome this connundrum.

So we’ve put ourselves on a 1 year training course. What this means is that we are teaching ourselves how to develop an income online as a viable business. BTW, the Challenge with Ed Dale and GuruBob has been hugely helpful in this respect and we’ve ‘met’ a real nice bunch of Ozzies this way and learnt a lot.

Well, we have begun to get some things moving and so we sat down one day and talked about how we may have to slow down the momentum that we have created if we go away. We talked long and hard and decided that we would exercise some delayed gratification, postpone our trip for a year, and work like mad to build something that could sustain us whilst we were away and indeed when we came back. So that’s what we are doing.

So this has now become our goal (and reward) for putting the work in now. So watch this space as we will be posting things about our Italian Holidays and anything else that we think may be of interest.

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Our Italian Holidays Is Now Known in New Zealand!

Posted on December 19, 2010 by Caroline

Wow, what an interesting week I’ve had. To begin with, we’ve had a huge amount of snow in the UK, certainly around where I live, and this has meant that transport networks have really slowed down (read: come to a stop in many places).

Christmas preparations are well under way and amongst all of this, I have a really good conversation with Jonathan Kraft.  I ‘met’ Jonathan (and his wife Carrie) by simply stumbling over their excellent web site a couple of weeks ago. They are currently in Auckland and have been there for several months.

Italian Holidays

As a real change from snowy Shropshire!

We got into ‘conversation’ because like myself, they love travelling and they also run their online businesses from their laptops whilst they are travelling. I can relate to that! Jonathan and Carrie have visited northern Italy themselves and so when Jonathan suggested that we get together on Skype so I could pick his brains about their time there, I jumped at the chance.

Here is the recording of that conversation – about 30 mins long.

interview with Caroline about traveling the worldDownload the interview with Caroline about us traveling the world

As I have said before, this is one of the great things about the Internet. If I hadn’t have started our Italian Holidays site, I wouldn’t have ‘met’ these nice people.

I hope you find something of interest in here, and if you do have any thoughts or comments on it, do let us know. Click on the link to see more of  Carrie and Jonathan on their site.

Ciao, Caroline

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Italian Holidays in February? Is there Really Anything Going On?

Posted on November 25, 2010 by Caroline
It would appear so!
Italian Holidays in February

Crikey - hope it's not this cold!

There are a couple of reasons why we decided to go to go on our Italian Holidays at the beginning of the year and they are linked. The main one is to do with the weather. Italy can be really hot in the Summer and as some of you will know, I travel with my own central heating and rarely get cold. So to spend time visiting  places in temperatures approaching 40 degrees, would not be much fun. I’d rather be flat out by the side of a swimming pool, and that dear reader is not why we’d be visiting Italy.

The other reason for choosing this time is that we’ve been told (note the cagey way I’m saying this) that there are a lot less people around. On my last visit to Florence, there were so many tourists there that we didn’t get to see some of the main sites. Okay, I can hear you saying that WE are tourists and you’d be right. So one of my mantras in life is to ‘observe the masses and do the opposite’ and so we thought it would be quieter in February.

Quite a lot of special events do take place in the Summer months, but I have found some that not only take place in Northern Italy, but at this time of year. In no particular order…

Region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia (North East corner of Italy)

1. Every February the town of Pordenone hosts a costumed Kangaroo Court, so I suggest that you avoid parking illegally otherwise you may end up in the local slammer!
2. Piancavallo – this is a ski resort in Friuli and here the Italian Winter Triathlon takes place. This includes foot racing, mountain biking and skiing. As we both have creaky joints, I think we’ll be giving this a miss although we could be watching it with glass in hand.
3. Pracchiuso is well known for its St Valentine’s Day celebration so we’ll see if we can pick up a couple of old boys there…just joking!

Lombardy Region (Central)

1. Berbenno di Valtellina – this town hosts a medieval festival in honour of St. Benigno De’ Medici.
2. Brescia. St Faustino is the patron saint of both Italian singles and for the city of Brescia and celebrates this fact with fireworks. Who knows, we may get lucky again and set off our own fireworks.
3. Emilia-Romagna – This is the gastronomic capital of Italy, so we can stuff our faces with some great food (we;re good at that) at the same time as watching (or participating) in Cesenatico’s Tug of War World indoor Championships.

Liguria Region (The Italian Reviera)

1. Pieve on the first Sunday of the month, hosts a Mimosa Festival honouring this lovely flower. There’s also lots of great food available (oh goody!)
2. Taggia – hosts a Historial Parade towards the end of February.
3. San Remo – The best-known and most widely attended celebration in Northern Italy in February is the San Remo Song Festival. It starts on the second Tuesday of February and goes on until the Sunday. The winner has a great chance for the Italian singing career. Sounds a bit like ‘Italy’s Got Talent’, so I might suggest Davina enters it. Apparently whilst San Remo’s population normal population is around 50,000, during the Festival, this increases to about 200,000. We may be sleeping in the car if we don’t book our bed and board beforehand.

So, whilst you be forgiven for thinking that nothing would be going on in February in this neck of the woods, it would appear that there’s actually quite a bit. The events with all the great food sounds good to me, and watching Davina singing on stage would be good for a laugh. We’ll let you know what happens.

Ciao, Caroline
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Our Italian Holidays site is known in Australia!

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Caroline

Here is one of the reasons why I love the Internet

The Koala Bear

A couple of days ago we received an email asking us to moderate a comment that had been left on this site.

Very shortly after this we received a second email from the person who had posted the comment. It was from a lady called Winnifred and she and her husband David will be moving from Canberra in Australia to an hours drive from Modena, which is quite near to Bologna. We are of course, planning to visit Bologna.

Winnifred explained that she and her husband were leaving Australia this coming Friday, 19th November to take a break in Italy to finalise the details on their house there.  Well, it’s not a house like I would describe it – rather a beautiful house in the making. You can see what I mean by taking a look at the pictures on their newly set up website www.ozinitaly.com. Their planned final move to Italy is June 2011. That’s 7 months and counting you guys. No pressure!

Now, Winnifred had obviously read our fledgling Blog and looked at the planning we are doing and realised that we are going to be in the area around the time that they will have moved there and suggested that we drop in and see them.

This is why I love the Internet. Just a few short years ago, this would have been impossible! Winnifred wouldn’t have known of our existence, we wouldn’t have been writing a Blog (‘cos we didn’t know how to) and so on. But today, we can connect really easily, build up a relationship through our Blog, find their new house easily (using Google Maps) and get to know them before we meet (if we so choose).

There are quite a few people I meet who tell me that they don’t want anything to do with computers/the Internet/the Web. You know, I think this is such a shame. To my mind, these days not having a go using the Internet is like not being able to read. I think it’s that important.

Ciao, Caroline

P.S. Don’t you just love those cute shoes?

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The search is on for some accommodation for the Italian Holidays

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Caroline

I thought I’d try something different today and instead of writing the post, I’ve recorded some audio – nothing like ringing the changes.

We’ve started to do some tentative research of where we’ll stay during our Italian holidays, so if any of you have any suggestions for us, do get in touch.

Here’s a couple of pictures of we took of La Colombaia. If you are interested in finding out more, let Elena & Daniel – the very hospitable owners - know that Davina & Caroline sent you. You may even get an extra slice of pizza! But then again…

The lovely pool at La Colombaia, Tuscany

That's Davina in the distance at La Colombaia

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Do Without the Internet on our Italian Holidays? I don’t think so..

Posted on October 11, 2010 by Caroline

One of the more important elements of the preparation for going on our Italian holidays is sorting out how we gain access to the Internet whilst we are away. Some of you may be thinking that this is the last thing you would want to know, but for me and Davina, it’s a must! How can we find out about things without Google? ~ grin~

It’s not just a question of what we do in Italy, but all the European countries that we will be travelling through to get there. We haven’t finalised that route just yet, but it is likely to include France and Switzerland. So what are our options, we wondered.

We recently went on a reccie to TheTrafford Centre in Manchester to visit the Apple store and drool over the ipad.  Well drool over the whole Apple thing to be honest. We both managed to restrain ourselves - just.

Whilst we were there, we popped into the Carphone Warehouse to ask what our options could be. We spoke with a very pleasant young man (crikey, that’s aged me using that phrase!) who gave us advice on using our mobile phones abroad. I’ll go into more detail in a future post on this, because I think its really important that people understand the implications.

Anyway, what it boils down to in effect is that:

  • We use Internet cafes with our own laptops
  • We definitely make sure that our accommodation has broadband
  • We find Wi Fi Hot-spots whilst we are away – you can do this by going to
  • http://www.jiwire.com/ – this looks like the easiest site to navigate
  • http://www.wififreespot.com/europe.html – here’s a second option
  • Or we use a Dongle giving us access to the Internet everywhere we are. This is our preferred option, however it would be very expensive. So we’ll have to do some more research on this. One thing we do know is that we can’t go on our Italian holidays without sorting this out.

There are a couple of websites I use as invaluable resources and I will contact a couple of these to see what they say. Will keep you posted. In the meantime if anyone has any suggestions for us, then please do get in touch.
Ciao, Caroline

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One of the Routes We May Take on Our Italian Holidays

Posted on September 25, 2010 by Caroline

Today I have been doing a little bit of research on the route we may take from North Wales to Genoa in Italy. It was decided that we should drive as opposed to fly, so that we wouldn’t be disrupted by the volcano (with the unpronounceable name in Iceland). BTW – what happened to the volcano – did it stop?

Davina’s hairdresser has a friend who regularly drives to Italy and so we thought we get some advice from her. But until that time when we speak with her, I thought I’d do some routling around myself.

For those of you who know me, you know that I think Google is the Bees Knees! I know some people are concerned about them knowing everything from what we ate for breakfast to how often we change our underwear, but I think they are great.

So, off I go and google – ‘driving to Italy from UK’. Immediately I found this very question asked and answered on Yahoo Answers and on the post was a link to a really great website.

The site is www.drive-alive.co.uk and on this site I found out the following:

How far it is from North Wales to Genoa, Italy
-    973 miles (wow, that’s quite precise!)

How long it is likely to take us   -  Approx 18 hours, not allowing for wee stops/filling up on Coffee, oh and sleeping!

How much it is likely to cost given that we will be driving a medium sized petrol car – £145.00

The site also had hotel and self-catering establishments dotted over our route so that we could just click on the red blob and get the low down on these places to stay.
Also on the site were details on how to book either a Ferry Crossing (£30 one way was the best price) or take Eurotunnel which just takes 35 minutes from Folkestone to Calais (£60 one way).


I noted down the suggested route which I shall call Route 1 for now and it includes:

  • Folkestone to
  • Calais
  • Reims
  • Dijon  then
  • Geneva in Switzerland
  • Chamonix Mont Blanc – French Alps
  • Saint Christophe
  • Chatillon  then
  • Ivrea in Italy
  • Alessandria
  • and finally Genoa

These days I don’t know what I would do without Google search. It’s only just a few short years ago that this little exercise would have taken me considerably longer to do. As it was, it took me about 15 minutes. Long live Google Search!

Caroline

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We’ve decided where we are going on our Italian Holidays

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Caroline

OK, it’s official. We have decided which area/s in Italy we are going to visit.

We’re going to Northern Italy, specifically:

Liguria Region – also known as the Italian Riviera in the North West, and includes lovely places such as Portofino & Genoa

Veneta Region- starring of course, Venice (Venezia) – also know as The City of Bridges, in the North East

Emilia Romagna/Lombardia Regions – Bologna (and surrounding area) – also known as The University City in the middle of the north, and to include Cremona and Lake Garda.

Our Italian Holidays - the areas we'll visit

Italy is quite a big country – about a third larger than the  UK and long and thin, and we’ve decided to stay there for about 6 weeks, so it’s not really practical to drive around and see all of it in that time. There are just so many things to see and do and therefore we decided to focus on one area – the north of the country.

We will be driving overland from UK and so it make sense also to explore the north.

I have been reading up about these 3 areas,  including the Italian lakes and I think we will have more of an issue deciding where not to go. Italian Lakes holidays are popular with so many people, that we may decide to go there first in the hope that it won’t be too busy. Hmmm, as I’ve said before, I think the only time that it isn’t busy in Italy is 4th January. (see a  previous posting on Our Italian Holidays)

So, we’ve decided when we are going, where we are going and how long-ish we are going for. Now we really get stuck into the detail of the organisation and preparation.

See you later, Caroline

Photo Credit: Wikipedia
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Our Italian Holidays – Know your greenhouse from your evening!

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Caroline

I am sure the Gods of Language got bored and decided to have some fun with us mere mortals and introduced all sorts of pitfalls into every language. Italian is no exception.

Take for example the words for evening and greenhouse. Imagine a hopeful young Romeo asking the fair Juliet to spend the evening (sera) with him. His pronunciation was a little under par and what Juliet heard was Romeo asking her to go to the greenhouse (serra) with him. “quello che un pazzo” (what a nutter) she thought and walked off. Or it would sound a little odd if the football commentator told us the striker kicked the shovel (pala) into the net instead of the ball (palla).

You have to know when to stress your letters. When there is a double consonant you hold the letters for a double beat like bus stop and bad dog in English (we don’t say bus top or bad og). The really tricky bit is remembering which word has the two consonants. There are certain words you don’t want to get mixed up – years (anni) and anuses (ani).

I have been trying to get to grips with double consonants, the gender of nouns, and whether a verb is regular or not, for the past 4 years, following our trip to Italy and the comic gesticulations and mumblings over the hosepipe when talking to Elena’s mother and aunt. I vowed I would have some knowledge of the language when I visited Italy again.

I have used a variety of methods to learn the language – audio tapes “15 minute Italian’, CDs – “Link Word Languages”, podcasts – “Learnitalianpod.com” and italian programmes on the TV. I did spend a term at the local college but unfortunately the teacher (very nice lady) was Russian, trying to teach Italian to Welsh people and it didn’t quite work for me.

I have found a combination of the written and the  accompanying sound of a word works for me. I have had to look up English Grammar to find out the meanings of pluperfect, past participle, preposition (to name a few) in order to understand the format of an Italian sentence. It keeps me off the streets. My sister has joined me in the pursuit and we have a weekly vocabulary quiz via Skype to keep us up to speed.

I am going to research Portable Language Translators as it is not very practical carrying a 500 page Italian/English dictionary around with me. Just incase we need to know whether we will be spending the evening in the greenhouse or whether to shut the greenhouse when evening arrives. We will let you know.

Ciao.

Photo credit: Brawn ” Two sisters are learning Italian for their holiday to Italy”
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Deciding on the best time to go on our Italian Holidays

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Caroline

So we are now into the ‘when do we go’ part of the planning. It’s definitely going to be in the early part of 2011. The last time we went to Italy we visited Florence, and we were there in May. This is a fine month, but not if you want to visit a popular place like Florence. How the natives of Florence put up with all the tourists I don’t know (I guess they just think of the income they bring in?). We couldn’t even get into the Uffizi….anyway, I digress.

And so, as we are planning our next Italian holidays, we have to factor this into the equation. We’ve decided that we will travel to northern Italy and definitely visit Venice. We know that Venice will be as busy as Florence. The January could be a good time to avoid the crowds of tourists, however perhaps not such a great time to go in the north of Italy, as it gets quite cold and wet in the winter months.

Lots of rain in Venice

Also as we are driving there (not sure of our route yet, but we’ll let you in on the secret in a future posting) there are high mountains between Italy and the UK and we don’t want to be driving in snow on the high Alps. Mind you, I don’t like the heat so a cold holiday would suit me perfectly. So it’s not just a question of jumping in the car and then we’re off.

I think we’ve settled on April and May. We’ll let you know as this becomes definite.

Arrivederci, Caroline

Photo credit: Courtesy of INM
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