Greetings.

Two new travel adventures.

ITALY When we first set up this blog for Columbia College, we talked about including experiences from various individual travelers. So, I'm going to try that this next week or so, depending on web access. I'm going with my niece Ashton and her mom Reggie to Italy. Ashton has traveled a bit here and there, a summer in London with jaunts across Europe, and she went on our CC trip to Egypt, but this will be Reggie's first time in Europe. I know she wants to see Rome, and we wind up in Venice, but I haven't pinned down at all what she wants to see. She keeps saying, "it will all be new." And so it will. Maybe I can capture some of what this is through her eyes. Me, I much like Florence, and love Venice. I hope we can get to Pompeii (or I'll sneak off while they indulge in a shopping marathon in Rome...).

This will be my 3rd trip to Italy, but I suspect I can still find things to enjoy. Perhaps better this time, as that first time we visit those longed-for places, we spend so much excitment and energy on the big sights, that often we are left hollow and disappointed when the actual place can't capture that movie moment. I'll be happy to see the Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum again, but sometimes those accidental encounters, those curious people with improbable hair or a less probably story or quiet balconies with sun-wilted geraniums are what we remember best. Like those tiny red ants crawling through the Temple of Athena at Troy, taking very little note of the centuries.


FRANCE For CC, the trip next year will be to France, between the spring and summer semesters. We liked EF Tours (they didn't feed me French fries every night...), and we hope to have Liz with us, the same guide we had in Spain.

To find out more, go to http://www.eftours.com/ and under the section Enroll Now, enter this number: 398567 For more details, email Ann Bledsoe (I can't spell her new name) at ambledsoe@ccis.edu

I rewrote a bit of the tour company's standard trip, to elimenate all the "one-night-stands"--those get-up-at-6-rush-to-the-bus, tour all day, have dinner in a new city at 9pm and then leave for another city the next day. Exhausting. So, all 2 nights per city this time, with two nights in Paris at both the start and end.

And, Liz suggested that Biarritz would be worthwhile, so we moved a section of the trip there instead of Bordeaux. And I put in a day of free time at the beach. Though we have plenty to go see if that is too stress-free.

So go sign up, even now. It's only money. And probably get the travel insurance. Things happen.



Ah--I meant to text Pam and have her insist that her niece go along with CC next year, but that text didn't arrive in time. Some things happen too fast.



bob