Hotel La Baita Crotone

... and yuppers, the baby train showed up to the baby train station, we didn't have tickets, but we were able to buy them on the train. We switched trains in perugia!
From ere we were off to ROME... and that is where the story will continue!!

Talk soon

LW

Side note: Stacy, thats again for everything, it was great to have met you, keep havin one hell of a ride through life!! until we meet again!!
Cheers

... of truffels...and I must say I do NOT like them...but at least I tried them before I bought one for $330,000.00...yep thats right. Some guy in the US bought a 2 lb Truffel for that much and then invited 200 guests over to taste it and ended up falling ill so he was unable to have a taste himself! CRAZY!! We saw some truffels that they were asking 100 euros for and another one that they were asking 350 euros for. Like are people nuts!?!?! Paying that for a fungus ...

... guess is the old time tourists would say any is too many. But take away the cruise ships and you would still have a lot of Brits and French.

Kusadasi
You know I really liked it so good.

Haifa
An industrial city that tries but really doesn't have a lot to recommend it other than some beaches. You make the best of it by trying to find interesting things to do but that mostly involves going somewhere ...

... of
family photos, and I even saw the statue of Nonna Elisabetta (Nonna’s mother; my great grandmother) that Zio Francesco sculpted. Of course, the next question was, “have you eaten?” Liberata made us the traditional family dish of potatoes and fresh green beans, just like Mommy and Nonna make. After dinner, Liberata took us on a walk of the town. As it was about 9pm, there were no women on the streets; only men who were drinking, strolling the ...

... me. haha They were so sweet. After we all had lunch (pasta yum) it seemed like distant cousins were coming to visit from everywhere! i got meet alot of my mothers cousins and some of my 2nd and 3rd cousins. It was really cool. We headed back to Sicily around 5-6pm. It was a very fun day and I took lots of pics. Just a few more days til I come home. Hope you all are doing well. Miss you so much. XOXOX

After Naples we wanted to go to Sicily but the hotel owner in Pompei said it was way too far to go that afternoon. Turns out she was right! We got as far as Cosenza, Calabria before getting off the train and looking for somewhere to stay at 9:30pm. The trip took about 4.5 hours and I spent most of the time entertained by an old school italian guy drooling over his jumper while he was sleeping :) Turns out everything is shut on Monday nights in Cosenza so we found the ...

... so far that is definatly not aimed at tourists. No souvineir shops, no info centres, no internet cafes and NO ONE speaks English. We walked all day looking for the latter two and couldnt find either.The main town was busy when we first got there, and then Bang! At 1300 it was dead. Apparently this is siesta time and everyone goes home for two hours for lunch. A few cafes were the only things open so we had lunch of foccacias and aranchini (rice balls). We then had a walk to have a look at ...

... gave us a very uncomfortable passage. .Nonetheless the tedium was relieved by a whale which surfaced about 50ft from the boat, blew a couple of times and then disappeared with a majestic flick of his tail. We saw lots of dolphins but Gina was also lucky enough to see one actually stand up and swim upright on its tail . After darkness fell we experienced our first Mediterranean thunderstorm which we could see coming over the Calabrian hills. It gave us a spectacular, free ...

Hello Again Everyone!! It has been quite a while, but we've been so busy that we haven't gotten a chance to write for almost a month. We wanted to update you on our trip to Calabria, when we traveled (12 hours!) south to visit Matthew's family for Easter. We spent three days with them and had a great time getting to know his nonna's sister, nonno's brothers, and their families. The trip started with a looong train ride south, where we met some very ...

... and things. Pietro was in a 3-piece suit and hat. We visited I think Pietro's sister and an aunt in Catanzaro. Pietro proudly drove us around the tiny streets and pointed out the new opera house or theater. We visited the old town where mom's dad grew up and stopped in at several different relatives. I kept a written diary of this time, especially what we ATE (delicious pizza one ...