Farm Stay Italy Dozza

I climbed a tree today, I sat in this tree on a branch. Protected, Buffered. Cradled. I read my book, sitting in a tree.
Feeling guilty of all I am not doing. I watch people riding by ringing their bicycle bells. I am strangly humbled. I sit in this tree and watch, the water fall from the fountain, making its delicate shapes and slapping to the base as it loses its fight with gravity.
I notice with a small ...

... turbo-prop model. Even our small hand carry luggage won’t fit under the seat or overhead bin on these small planes, so we gave them to baggage handlers at the plane and they stowed them for us.

We arrived at the Munich airport at 2:00 pm and called the King Hotel for instructions on transportation options to the hotel. We found the “S” train, which is basically very similar to our BART system, was the way to go. For 18 ...

... from rocking out of tight situations.

Ferrara Highlights
9200 meters of city walls commissioned by Duke Ercole d'Este and built between 1493 and 1505 with walking paths on top.

Castello Estense de Ferrara--a defensive structure from the early middle ages that dominates the old city surrounded by moat. The Castello Estense was menacing from the outside and lavishly decorated on the inside. You could feel the history and understand the ...

Short train ride from Florence after a hair raising trip trying to return the rental car in confusing, congested and traffic restrictied Florence (don't rent a car downtown go to the airport). Bologna is an university town (even Johns Hopkin has a campus). Very historical town with a great plaza area like most towns and a great antique market.

... an hour. No one follows these limits. I know because Mandi and I found ourselves on such a road, on singlespeed step through bikes, getting passed by Porsches, Minis, and giant semi trucks headed north at 100 km an hour. At first we thought it would get better. Then we resigned ourselves to our fate. We were going to do this, no matter how crazy it was. And that's how we ended up biking nearly ...

... is actually the same bus we just got off of, the guy just had to turn around and I guess he didn't think we were going to get back on. So anyway, it took us about an hour to get to our hotel after we got off the train (which was delayed by two hours) but we made it. As we check in i notice that there are six slots with room keys behind the front desk that are not numbered but have names of famous artists. We give the ...

... farmers. Other activities are the info shop "infoshock", a cinema; an Internet cafe; a ciclo officina (bike workshop); an Italian language course school for migrant; a gym; and now and then they organize diners, parties and concerts.. (every Thursday for sure). By chance we met two other cyclists that also stay here for the night, from USA. They are also traveling around in Italy now, same low budget style but with really ...

... It turned out the hotel wasn’t too far away, and on the way there we learnt that the man was Sicilian, and he couldn’t understand why we were in Bologna. It was a bit too hard to sign language 'we got a cheap flight here, it’s only for 1 night and then we are off to the Cinque Terre’. We did manage to get the Cinque Terre bit across – he said it’s ‘OK’ but we should really be going to Sicily because that is much ...

... tell y'all what's been going on...

I'm on week #2 on the farm. Agri-tourism they call it. It has taken me awhile to write because as I mentioned, I've been toiling with my perceptions of what this experience is. It can be looked at in completely contradictory ways - and both would be absolutely correct.

I am just outside a village called Dozza working on a Help Exchange program. I found their ad on the website, responded, they accepted, and here I am!! Basically, this ...

... watching the goats being entirely uncooperative and Mark being determined to outsmart them. I can almost hear his thoughts - "must be smarter than the goats... C'mere you little...#(@^#@*!!" ha! (We do work shifts here - I'm on the afternoon shift - for those of you wondering why I might be allowing the goats to run wild as I sit back and snicker! lol! )

But I'll back up in time a bit and give the low down leading to now....

After saying ...