WELCOME TO OUR ITALY:

A sensuously beautiful country full of warm, exhuberant people, delicious gelatos and crazy drivers.

(Please click on the image to see an enlargement)

Noreen's watercolor painting of Amalfi.

ITALIAN HOLIDAY:

On September 12, 2002, my friend Jim and I set off for our carefully planned one month holiday in Italy. For a year we had saved money, mapped out our itinerary in great detail and studied Pimsler's Italian language tapes up to lesson 47. We were traveling light and ready for adventure.

(Please click on the image to see an enlargement)

Noreen and Jim Travel Light

However, this holiday pilgrimage had a mind of it's own unlike any I've known before. From the get-go, the unexpected became the norm. For starters, our luggage was lost in Paris for the first week. I ask you, how many times can you turn your underwear inside out and continue wearing in comfort! We had underestimated the number of tourists everywhere; overestimated our driving capabilities in this land of insane drivers; vastly underestimated the amouht of 'stuff' we would buy and eventually have to spend mega bucks to mail it home; overestimated our ability to keep relatively stress free as we took off to parts unknown and not on our original itinerary. The list goes on ...

Yet the miracle is that this holiday was also packed full of mind-blowing, memorable, marvelous experiences which we have both written up in great detail ... enough for a book!! My hope is that the following picture-stories entice you enough to want to embark on more never-to-be-forgotten adventures of your own.