The next day was our only full day in Florence.  I was almost immediately in love with the city, so much more so than Rome.  I developed a theory that your preferred cities in Italy correlate to your preferred eras in history.  Rome is for people who like the ancient Romans and similarly old cultures and cities, Florence is for Renaissance geeks like me. We only had one day in Florence, and I wanted to make it count, so we […]

Categories: Travel Tales, Traveling

On our last day in Rome, Sarah woke up with a stomach bug.  We had no major plans, so we stayed at the hotel for a few extra hours until she felt up to going out and doing some last minute shopping.   It was surprisingly cool for Rome on our last day (though don’t take that to mean we needed anything close to a sweater; it was just more like 85 rather than 95). I had my heart set […]

Categories: Travel Tales, Traveling

“Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.” -John Steinbeck Positano entered America’s radar in the 1950’s when John Steinbeck wrote about his visit, one he took to escape the heat of Rome (see, it wasn’t just me) for Harper’s Bazaar.  However, I’m sure it would’ve been discovered sooner or later because it’s just that damn charming, and I didn’t get to see nearly […]

Categories: Travel Tales, Traveling

On our second full day in Rome, we conquered. Our morning was pretty leisurely.  We slept in, gave our legs a bit of a rest, and had breakfast, where we made a plan for the day.  Quick learners, we knew that we didn’t want to be outside in the heat of the day, and so we decided to visit some museums so that we would be out of the sun for the early part of the day, and then head […]

Categories: Travel Tales, Traveling

I believe I mentioned in my last entry that it’s hot in Rome.  Well, the first day was nothing compared to the second day in which, because we were going to the Vatican and it had dress requirements, I was wearing a maxi dress that basically felt like wearing a blanket. However, before we get to that, we’ll start with the basics.  Our day began in the breakfast room of the hotel.  Located right next to the roof garden, it […]

Categories: Travel Tales, Traveling

Disclaimer: I looked up the title of this post on Google translate, so I apologize to anyone who speaks Italian if that’s completely butchered in some way.  I considered writing the “farewell Malta” part in Maltese and the “hello, Italy” part in Italian but that just seemed unnecessarily confusing. The day we left Malta dawned… well, quite dark actually.  A taxi picked us up at 4 a.m. and so we were up by 3:30, well before the sun, getting ourselves […]

Categories: Travel Tales, Traveling

What I thought was going to be a day with nothing to really write home about (we didn’t have any particular plans and were just winging it) became a fascinating example of Gozotan culture. In the morning we ran errands and started the packing process.  We were leaving for Rome two days later and our suitcases looked like the aftermath of a tornado… or at the very least a very strong wind.  Or possibly a toddler attack.  Sadly none of […]

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Tuesday was our big boat tour, the one we’d had planned for over a week and was really our only solidified plan for the week.  We had arranged it with the company the night we had dinner in Xlendi, and they agreed to pick us up a grocery store near Sarah’s grandmother’s house.  We had to be up bright and early to meet them by 9:30 to make the boat by 10 a.m. The car picked us up as scheduled […]

Categories: Travel Tales, Traveling

The next two days of the trip were a much slower affair.  To sum up (though I will be a tad more thorough): we ate and we slept. Sunday morning was spent closing up the apartment and prepping for our move to Sarah’s grandmother’s house.  Her parents were leaving the next day and for the duration of the trip we would be staying at her grandmother’s house. We stripped the beds, cleaned out the fridge, cleaned the bathroom and packed […]

Categories: Travel Tales, Traveling