Intro Note

This website is a version of the travelogue I wrote home to friends and family in the form of emails from March to October of 2000. The photos didn't really 'happen' until I got home and saw what I had accumulated on handsfull of Canon Elph APS film, and have been integrated after the fact.

Techno-drags were much worse in 2000. I was plagued with lack of internet connections, computer problems and cell phone malfunctions which took me from exasperation to discouragement to loneliness to downright depression at times, and also led me to interact with sundry helpful and comforting souls. One of the great disappointments of the trip was my loss of many photos to the use of a primitive Sony Digicam (DCR-TRV10) which I thought I could take still pictures. They didn't even list megapixels then, and when I returned, I found they were garbage. This is why some places are not represented with photo pages. (I have replaced what should have been with others from different locations.)

The inspiration for publishing this travelogue came when I began to make plans for a return trip from 23 August to 14 November of 2006. Along the way I discovered the forums at a wonderful travel site called Slowtrav, where a community of great people encourage renting apartments and living in places we visit instead of darting around fearing we’ll miss out on something. The incredibly generous and knowledgeable people on these forums, and the separate Slow Travel site are treasure troves of useful information. People at Slowtrav write up Trip Reports with stories, photos and helpful, delicious discoveries about every destination.

Slowtrav didn't exist in 2000. If it had, I'd have learned from its wisdom to plan a different kind of journey, as I am for my upcoming trip. As it was, my stays in important cities like Venice, Rome and Florence were too short. I stayed in hotels or apartments in cities, and chose B&B's in rural areas, with visits to old and new friends and a week long rental of a charming stone cottage with a pool in the Lot of France thrown in. Parts of the trip evolved in response to my health and unpredictable events. Sometimes I had no plan and pulled over to consult Sawday's for a spot to rest my head, leading to wacky and wonderful surprises.

There were times when I didn't write at all because I was too preoccupied with living, or sick with a cold and URI, or exhausted or crabby or just plain missing my muse. In this report, I'll occasionally fill in with a reconstructed memory written after the fact of what was going on in the time gaps. (Summer, 2006)