Hola Amigos!!

Hola amigos! Estoy aqui en Santiago, Chile.....about to go check out the town with three friends from business school.

Hope you are well and a Happy Thanksgiving to all! I will try to do another post later on with some exciting photos from the Miami airport....and a few from Santiago as well!

Ciao for now!

Home

Well ragazzi, it's finally that time.

After nearly two and a half months in Bologna, Italy, I am now back in California, and I can unequivocally say, it's GREAT to be home!!

There is a certain feeling of being back home that is undescribable, but, I will do my best.

Certain things like a hot shower with great water pressure, excellent customer service, a turkey burger and bottomless iced tea....18 holes of golf....these things are part of "home" for me.

But, what's really great about being home? Family and friends. Without a doubt.

I guess you could say it's like the hamster you don't really miss until it's gone, then you go to Italy for two months and come back and that hamster is there welcoming you back.......okay, this isn't really working and I never had a hamster growing up (we had pet rats, Snowball and Midnight).

I guess the thing is, there is no good analogy that comes to mind right now to describe how good it feels to be back on American soil, welcomed by family and friends.

In only a few short months, the financial world has been turned upside down, and chaos continues to ensue on a daily basis. Even so, the sun is still shining, birds are chirping and there is so much natural beauty surrounding us. Just driving across the Golden Gate bridge and staring out at the ocean (while keeping one eye on the road and staying out of the middle lane), or winding through the vineyards on the way back from Napa as the sun sets....man, these things truly make my home a special place.

Spending a few days with my parents, catching up and learning what's new, sharing my experiences from Italy.....talking on the phone with friends and hearing about what has been going on in their lives.

Yes, two and a half months is a short period of time, but also enough to step away and come back and realize how grateful I truly am to live in a beautiful part of the world with wonderful people in my life.

Perhaps I could have gained this perspective in another way, but, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to take some time off and travel to another beautiful part of the world, meet some great people and do some exploring. But, this relatively short trip, and my subsequent return has reinforced the notion of what "home" means to me.

A few days ago, when I spoke to my brother, he had asked me if I was going to do a post that summed up my travels in Italy. I said that for sure I was, though at the time, I wasn't really sure how I could summarize those two and a half months. What did I learn? What could I take away from the experience? Then, as I began to write, words started flowing, and it dawned on me that the most important thing that I learned was how lucky I am and how much I truly love "home." To all of you reading this blog, and not just those living in California, e.g., Ted in Moscow, Sarah in NY and others out of state and out of country, you are part of "home," and I genuinely thank you for your friendship and your love and want you to know that each of you means a great deal to me and I am so happy to have you in my life.

And so, on that note, I will say "ciao," but as in posts of past, "ciao for now," because within a few days, I will be reporting live, from South America, with more pictures of food, more obnoxious observations and more........pictures of food.

Okay, ragazzi, this is not the end....but I feel myself growing sentimental as we move on from this portion of the blog, so, as they told me in Italy before I left, not "addio" (i.e., goodbye), rather "arrivederci," (i.e., "see you"), and in this case, "arrivederci presto!," (see you soon!).

L'ultimo aperitivo

Ragazzi, I am running off to meet some friends for the last aperitivo of this trip to Italy, so I will make this a short, photo-less :( post.

I will save some pics for the next post, in which I will also (possibly) attempt to wrap up this experience in a few words........but, not this blog.

You didn't really think the travel adventure ended in Italy, did you....?

Back to the good ole US of A for five days....then off to....

......................

SOUTH AMERICA!! More interesting (hopefully?) posts from Chile and Buenos Aires.

Arrivederci ragazzi!!

Ciao!

Chowing down Croatian style, then B to B

While I will still give the nod to Italy for best food in Europe, hands down, I will say that our dining experiences in Croatia were.....interesting.

Jon and I did our best to sample many of the local dishes, some pictured below, including pašticada which is beef marinated in wine and vinegar, eaten with gnocchi; baccala a la bianca, which is salted cod with whipped potatoes, and lots and lots of grilled fish varying in terms of quality.

Wash it all down with a Bitter Lemon Pipi (the name provided me with no small amusement) and a palačinke, or walnut crepe (Jon's favorite from his time spent in Hungary) and you are good to go!

After almost a week in Croatia (following the week in Germany), it was good to get back to temporary home in Bologna.

We finished off the weekend with a whirlwind day in Bologna, doing the MamBo (Museum of Modern Art Bologna) in the morning, hiking one of the two towers in the early afternoon (pause for gelato), lunch at Cesarina and dinner at Bitone, a restaurant just outside the city center that earned itself a Michelin star.

Roughing it in Dubrovnik then splitting to Split

Ciao ragazzi! Wow, is it Monday already? Did the weekend really go by that fast?

In any case, I spent the last week or so in Croatia with Jon Atkins, a good friend who made the trip all the way out from New York.

After a few good meals in Bologna (not sure Jon's former cousin would have approved of all of the carbs...), we packed our bags and headed off, using various forms of transportation, i.e., train, taxi, overnight ferry and bus all the way to Split, but only for a brief stop before spending a night in Dubrovnik.

Since it was not high season in Croatia, we were lucky to find hotels with ample availability and reduced rates. As you can see, we were hardly roughing it in Dubrovnik, at the Imperial Hilton, a really nice place. The second picture is the view from our room on the third floor.

We must have been making up for the reasonably priced hotel on our meal at Proto, a seafood restaurant acclaimed by locals and guidebooks alike, as the BEST place to eat in the area. Though my seafood platter below was quite good, it was not worth the price tag, but proved much better than one of the more local places we found that evening.

Evidently, the vast majority of the restaurants are almost strictly for tourists, and no tourists in the off season means no customers. In more than a few of the places we ate, we were the only ones there for the entire meal.....

Dubrovnik itself, as was the case for the other two cities we visited (Split and Zadar) includes and old town with cobblestone streets and centuries old architecture, and a newer, more modern area like many other European cities.

As you can imagine, most of the tourist destinations are in the older parts of the city, and, in Dubrovnik, we had the opportunity to visit the oldest synagogue in Croatia (and quite possibly the smallest, covering roughly no more than 25 square meters).

After a day of sightseeing and a morning of walking along the coastline and through parts of the new city, we decided to hightail it out to Split.

Four hours later, we arrived, accommodation-less, to a very wet Split.

Consulting our guidebook, we tried a few different hotels, none of which were very good from a price to value ratio. We had found one decent place, but after learning that we would have to share a bed, opted to look elsewhere. Fortunately, the guy working at the front desk understood our predicament, and was happy to call a few other places on our behalf.

In the end, we were able to find a very nice, reasonably priced room right in the heart of the old city. Even better, we awoke the next morning to a (mostly) dry city, despite our (mostly) wet clothing and luggage. Below are a few pics in front of our hotel in the old city, with the same smooth cobblestone streets as we found in Dubrovnik.

In Split, we had an opportunity to check out another synagogue (trying to balance our time between so many churches!), not the oldest or smallest in Croatia, but very cool nonetheless.

Our guide, a Jewish Croatian in his mid fifties was more than happy to give us a full account of the history of the synagogue, which was originally built in the 1500s, and restored several times, most recently in 1996 through money provided by the Croatian government. Since there is no rabbi in Split, services are only formally held when one visits from Zagreb, the capital located in the interior of the country.

Neighboring the synagogue is the former Jewish ghetto, which contains many houses with mezzuzah (mezzuzot?), or holes in the place of where they used to be. Also not far away was this swastika, spray-painted on the wall of a local business. A stupid act of vandalism, but also a reminder that there is still hatred and misunderstanding out there...

Greetings from Split

Boy, and I thought I was spoiled with the keyboard in Germany, offering all kinds of linguistic possibilities.

Well, that was certainly before I arrived here in Croatia, where characters like "š" and "đ" run rampant, not even to mention "č"s and "ž"s flitting about.

Other than its host of interesting letters, Croatia (thus far - have been here about thirty minutes after ferrying from Ancona) looks to be splendid, with warm weather and a beautiful Dalmatian (is that where the dog comes from?) coastline.

It's a little after 7:00 AM, and Jon and I are about to embark on a four hour bus ride from Split to Dubrovnik, will be spending a day or two down there, then hit Split on the way back before ultimately departing from Zadar on Friday.

On the day of this very exciting election, I wish you a good one and will be in touch!

Ciao.....!