Don't Blink

If you blinked, you missed yesterday's blog...actually didn't happen. We attended a wedding at Stone Mountain for the daughter of some old friends. Beautiful wedding and a lovely day! In any case, I did talk with another guest who, several years ago, traipsed off to Italy for five weeks by herself and lived to tell about it. Sounded like the worst things that happened to her was going to the market on the back of a Vespa and figuring out how to use the expresso machine in her apartment. We should be so lucky!


Today Betsy and I did some planning around luggage (valiges). Because she has to take specific art supplies ( and Little Swimmy diapers we might not readily find), we may not be able to keep to the aforementioned luggage plan but it remains workable. Our goal is to get there without paying for extra luggage which is "doable" with the allowance for international flights plus the allowance for Medallion members. I always tuck my small travel purse (for use in- country) within a purse large enough to hold the ipad, travel book, quart-sized makeup bag, etc. and then still have a carry-on possibility if necessary. This luggage thing is vexing but we can always use carts at the airport and porters if needed. I still have Euros from a previous trip we can use until we find the bancomat. Definitely will get Euros before we leave the airport avoiding the cambio (exchange) offices and the hotel. Rider (below) obviously has no worries about Mimi and Mom's packing dilemmas.

By the way, I have been working sporadically through Barron's Learn Italian the Fast and Fun Way.  There's a bit too much grammar for my purposes but it's colorful and some exercises are quite good. I truly should have spent more time on it. All this masculine and feminine seems superfluous though and I'm not concentrating on tenses either. Counting on the locals being able to know what tense I should be using! I now know how to buy an apple (mela) and tell Rider about a gatto. At least it is a start...