Archaeologists always fight the idea that they are mere treasure hunters. Archaeology, they want to believe, is a science. Yet you know more about the elite of any country's past than you do about the working class; you know more about the grand temples and wide streets than you do of the houses and kitchens of the people.

So it wasn't suprising that 500 wooden cases (some marked as cases of matches) came to light from excavations in Rome that took place in 1939. Much of the haul was of "instrumentum domesticum", or objects from the domestic life of Romans, things they used daily. You can see what I'm talking about in a picture gallery from la Repubblica.

I always recommend folks go to Ostia Antica. Unlike Pompeii or Herculaneum, Ostia was a port city and the excavations reveal apartments, a fire station, and other architecture of folks that toiled for a living. Ostia is also more lightly touristed, You can get there by taking the Metro at Piramide. Look for Roma-Lido. Get out at the Ostia Antica stop.

You see, the Guardia di Finanza, Italy's tax police, are allowed to carry guns, and often do. They are also allowed to stop you, flash a badge, and ask to see a receipt from a store you've recently exited. (They seldom shoot people over the lack of a receipt--but you never know. I just like talking about the tax police wielding weaponry. It seems excessive somehow.)

In any case, the reason I'm reminded of this is that my friend Frank has just been busted in Pontremoli over a lack of receipt for a 2 Euro slice of pizza:

...my server says due euro. I slap a 2 euro coin down and grab the pizza but don't take the cash register receipt, as I am fresh out of hands to grab it. I join my wife and dog outside and a tourist comes up to me and says something I can't quite hear. I ask him in English if I can help him and he shows me his identification FINANCIAL POLICE.

Frank played dumb and talked his way out of the fine. Frank could probably talk his way out of anything--in English. There's nothing like a barrage of several thousand words of English coming at you non-stop as a ploy to confound the constabulary--but taking the receipt is a whole lot easier in the end.

Last Friday the Temple of Romulus, located in the Forum of Vespasian, was open for viewing. Like the Pantheon, its interior was preserved when the pagan temple was converted to a Christian church in 527 known as the basilica of Santi Cosma e Damiano.

Eternally Cool has information on the program.

Another aspect of the Archeologia d'Estate is Moon over the Colosseum – Flavian Nights". Pay 15 Euros and you can take a night tour of the Colosseum.

Enjoy Rome at night, if only to avoid the heat.

Live out in the country long enough in Italy and you'll come across garishly colored signs announcing various food festivals called Sagre. These represent your chances to eat well and cheaply during the summer season, without having to get the kitchen all heated up.

Every weekend thousands of these things are held across Italy. You can join in easily. The hardest part at the good ones is to find a parking place. In the country we just leave our cars anywhere. Your mileage and tolerance for breaking the law may vary.

In any case you'll be herded toward a table with a list of all the foods on offer. Just pick the dishes that sound good to you, pay up and head to a table while they take care of your order.

A village in our vicinity in northern Tuscany recently held a sagra as a benefit for their sports teams. In the picture is a plate of meat we bought for €7, cooked over a wood fire and emerging mighty delicious. There's a sausage, three ribs, and a pork chop.

Buon appetito.

La Spezia was always an important port in Italy. It's fitting that the Festa della Marineria be held there. The festival celebrates "the arts, culture and traditions of the sea". You'll see antique sailing vessels racing each other in regattas and more.

We went on Thursday, when things were just getting set up. Marine antique dealers held to one side of the waterfront, displaying all sorts of things you might want in your house--or not, depending upon whether a nautical theme suits you.

Old sailing vessels were scattered throughout the port area. Folks strolled between them, gawking at the polishing being done as the ships were being readied for the festival. A huge, articulated metal statue of a woman was being hoisted unsuccessfully to a standing position. At noon, thundering cannons announced, well, noon I suppose.

There are special seafood meals being served in the local restaurants in honor of the festival (you have to have a coupon, as far as I know). La Spezia has a suprising number of restaurants just inland of the port area. For a town that's on nobody's lists of places to visit before you die, La Spezia is actually quite nice.

A walk up to the Archaeological Museum rewards you with not only fine artifacts for viewing, but the museum is inside a castle; the views down to the port are quite nice. The walk up the stairs is not.

The Festa della Marineria runs from the 11-16 of June. I didn't find any info in English, but here's the official site in Italian.

Surely he jests! But no!

The Committee of Freedom, (an Orwellian moniker, doncha think?), has nominated Mr. Berlusconi to follow in the famous footsteps of the likes of Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner (née Countess Kinsky von Chinic und Tettau) and Yasser Arafat.

Evidently, Silvio Berlusconi had a key role in bringing peace to Israel and Palestine. Long may that peace hold.

If you read Italian, you can learn all of Mr. Berlusconi's key roles in promoting world peace and prosperity by going to the Silvio Berlusconi Nobel website. A couple of warnings are in order before you click on that link, however. First, there's loud and cheesy "music" you can't turn off. Second, you'll encounter frequent bolding of text, a trademark of Berlusconi nemesis (and nemesis of many) Beppe Grillo. (Or maybe bolding is an Italian political trait. I'll get back to you on that.)

Perchè Silvio Berlusconi? Perchè indeed.

This spring Puglia was awash in wildflowers. We were lucky enough to spend four nights at Masseria Li Mennuli, where we sampled the delights of Italy's southern coast.

Francesco was a great host, and his Passito, a sweet dessert wine produced on the estate and made from Gewürztraminer and dried Muscat grapes, was superb. Francesco also bottles a fine Primitivo, the wine of the area around Manduria, and it was top notch as well. We learned a lot about Puglia from Francesco and his close neighbor also named Francesco.

Below is a short Video compiled from our Puglia stay.

To stay in this area of Puglia, see the following links:
Masseria Li Mennuli
Masseria Li Reni

As you can see in the picture, luscious strawberries are showing up, even in this northern Italy market in Pinerolo, where the Giro d'Italia just passed through.

There are also some very spiny artichokes and lots of asparagus.

Risotto with asparagus is simple to prepare. We warm some broth and add the chopped up stems of asparagus to the broth to cook a bit, then we brown the rice a little in a butter/olive oil combo, then start adding the broth and the stems, stirring frequently. When the rice is just about finished we add the tender tips to just barely cook them. Finish with some Parmigiano Reggiano, and you're done!

The Italian blog Zoomata is featuring a incendiary article called "Financial Crisis Puts Italian Men to Work at Home." It turns out Italian men, even unemployed ones, don't help out with the housework very often. The statistics sound real bad. Did you know that " 90% (of them) have never, ever, ironed a shirt"?

Whoa! Those thugs! They should be shot, eh? Forget the fact that I've had two wives (at different times, thank you very much) and neither of them had ever ironed a shirt as far as I know. I figure it this way: you make busy work, you finish it yourself.

Ok, so I'll admit: I'm not one of those wimpy men who say, "awright, I'll share the housework with ya, 50-50. It's only fair."

Because, frankly, it's not.

I'd be willing to become less "Italian" and do some housework if women would sign up to some simple demands to even the playing field. Here they come.

Numero Uno: When you're driving home from work and your little Chrysler/Fiat is making some ear-splitting noise that wasn't there before and sounds expensive, you are heretofore forbidden to say, "Honey, the car is making a funny noise and I really need it tomorrow to go to Milano for a business meeting. Could you rebuild the engine tonight after you do the dishes and iron my taffeta business meeting gown?"

Numero Due: When the faucet is dripping, instead of crying out "Honey, water is dripping from the kitchen faucet" you get out the wrench and plan on 45 trips to the hardware store to get the correct fitting just like you'd expect him to do. Whoever is bothered by something fixes it. If there is no "women's work" then there can be no "man's work" either.

Numero Tre: If you want an olive from an unopened jar, you'll just have to crack the darn thing open using the edge of the marble sink. I'm watching the Giro d'Italia until laundry time.

I suspect there'll be comments. Have at it.

If you were in Italy right now, chances are a multicolored, undulating snake of a line of bicycles with professional riders is coming to a blocked-off country road near you soon.

It's the Giro d'Italia--where the leader wears pink. Proudly. The Giro started in 1909, and took off some war years, so this is the 100th anniversary for the race. (Find out more from an informative Transparent Language blog post)

The Giro is pretty much at the height of its modern popularity right now with the inclusion of Lance Armstrong in the bunch. Lance probably won't come close to winning the Giro this year, but if you really want to follow vicariously the life of a professional bike rider, you can sign up to twitter and follow @lancearmstrong.

Lance is racing for free, and has over 3/4 of a million people following him as he rides the Giro. He tells great stories of the journey, 140 typed characters at a time.

Yesterday, for example, while peddling along with the peloton, he spotted the owner of a pensione he had stayed in when he won the Settimana Bergamasca in 1991. Mamma Elena was standing by the side of the road watching the race and waving a sign. Later, she visited him in his hotel in Bergamo. She's now a spry 89 years of ago. Lance even left us a picture of her.

Imagine, these days you don't have to rely on traditional media to tell you second hand stories of personalities who tour the globe.

We'll be in the lovely Val Chisone when the gang comes through on Tuesday. You can follow us as we watch and interview some fans of Italian bike racing: @wanderingitaly and in this very blog, of course!

Ok, I have to admit, Gallipoli is my favorite town in Puglia--so far. The picture tells the story. Pick a warm, sunny day. You'll be seeing blue.

Yes, I know that Lecce is the "Baroque jewel" in Puglia's crown. Lecce is wonderful.

Gallipoli, though, is a seaside village that isn't entirely devoted to tourism, but rather to the enjoyment of folks who head down for some rest and relaxation. Plus, people still make a living fishing in Gallipoli. You can walk the little streets of the historic center and discover little places like Corte Gallo, a virtual outdoor ethnographic museum with all manner of cultural items you'd expect to find in the houses of a small fishing village maybe 40 or 50 years ago. People have just assembled these things and stuck them artistically to the walls spanning two courtyards. Fabulous!

If you have an apartment, you can go down to the fish market and talk to the friendly folks there, who will sell you impeccably fresh fish (mussels, 2€ a kilo!) or will have fun guessing where you're from.

If you don't like the look of fish fresh from the sea, you can choose to have your them served to you right on the shores of Gallipoli's jutting peninsula with the little houses as a pastel background to it all.

I found Gallipoli friendly, inexpensive, and full of life and vitality. Try it. You'll like it--even when you're blue.

Where I come from, wine is a specialty drink. Bottles of it cost $7 and up. You can get cheaper, but you get what you pay for.

Not in Italy. Sure, there are fine wines costing an arm and a leg. But there is also vino sfuso. The biggest vino sfuso operation I've seen is the one at the Museum of Wine in Manduria, home to Primitivo di Manduria.

You not only get a glimpse of wine production in the good, old days, but you can also taste some fine bottled wines.

Or you can step up to the pumps, declare your favorite wine, and a very nice woman will stick a nozzle in your bottle and off you go with 5 liters of your choice.

So, you want to save money on your Itlalian vacation? Just rent a vacation home in the heart of Pulia and get your wine where it can cost less than a Euro/liter.

We all crave those non-touristy places, don't we? Usually the problem is that those places are untouristed for a reason. There are no tourist facilities, no one to explain everything to you.

I've just been on a whirlwind trip around Puglia. We went to a lot of tourist places in Trulli country. Yes, Alberobello was fine, Locorotondo gleamed white in the sun, the trulli poked their heads into the sky proudly...

But you know which place I liked best? Manduria.

Ever been to Manduria, a town of some 30,000 people in Puglia? You might have gone through it without noticing much, but Manduria is loaded with things to see in a day or two.

Let's see, there's the wine museum. You see, Manduria is the center of Primitivo di Manduria wine production and the museum not only shows off the old tools and methods that folks in these scenic parts used to make their wine, but it offers tasting of some top quality primitivos, and even has a sort of wine station where you can fill your bottle for a Euro or two a liter from pumps that look just like gasoline pumps but are much cleaner.

Then there's the archaeological museum. It's not enormous, but its devoted exclusively to the local culture. Manduria is a center for ancient Messapian settlement. Ring the bell at the museum and you can see the artifacts manufactured many thousand years ago by the local Messapians, like the vase in the picture.

We happened upon a photography session at the museum featuring uncleaned artifacts from a recently excavated tomb. I asked if we cold film them. The answer was "yes". You won't get that kind of answer from big city museums, where paranoid researchers guard against public viewing of artifacts until after publication, which sometimes never comes.

Pliny the Elder mentions a spring in Manduria (he called it Mandonion) which never changed its level, no matter how much water was drawn or added. You can see it today, or tomorrow for that matter--and with the same entrance ticket you can also see the Messapian walls that surround Manduria, an important stronghold of the Messapii against powerful Tarentum (nearby Taranto).

There are also some wonderful places to eat in and around Manduria. And don't get me started on the wine shop or the friendly pourer at the enotecca.

How did I find out all these things? I stayed at a masseria, a large family farm (some were fortified against the frequent pirate attacks from the coast). Each day I gleaned information from the owners on where to go and what to see.

The cool thing is that you can too. Check out these masserie. You won't regret not staying in a hotel. And believe me, the rural life is a heck of a lot cheaper than the city life.

Next week is a big week. Tomorrow, the 25th of April, is Liberation Day in Italy. Our local market town, Sarzana has already had its solemn celebration, a small gathering with lots of big speaches.

After a stop in Panzano for a book signing, we'll be off for Puglia.

I love Pulia. I did a 7 week archaeological survey there. I'll never forget the olive groves. In summer, each tree was treated with great care, the ground below swept of living things, each tree sitting in the center of a raked sand zen garden.

The constant and droning song of the cicadas reminded us that it was summer.

Then there was the wine. Primitivo, a relative of Zinfandel, was a favorite. The owners of many restaurants served carafes of it at a ridiculously low price for something so incredibly flavorful. It was like the spirit of the land itself.

As we walked along the land making up the heel of Italy's boot, we were amazed at the cultural artifacts that had surfaced. You'll find evidence of Greek settlement, Roman coins, clay pipes and other treasures underfoot. It was hard to make sense of though--after wondering why artifacts appeared in profusion on one side of a stone wall while nothing at all showed up on the other, we started to pay attention to modern culture--and found it was common practice to sell soil so that olive trees could be grown just about anywhere you could get a truck to. That meant you'd find Roman coins in beach sand on a hill 30 km from the nearest beach. Hmmm.

So the trip should be very interesting. We'll be staying at the Masseria Li Mennuli. We'll have a great time making videos and pictures; letting you know what to expect from a villa rental--and how much more rewarding it is compared to staying in a hotel. Join us for the trip.

For real time updates, you can follow us on Twitter. I'm @wanderingitaly.

It's fun to be in Italy at Easter, especially when you're in a village.

After a walk that took us to the next town over, we returned to find one of our neighbors puttering around in his cantina. I said "ciao" to him and by the time Martha came around the corner he had a bottle ready to hand her.

Then, around noon, Martha puttered around just long enough so that Francesca came out and asked her if we were alone this Easter. We were indeed.

"Well," said Francesca, "we have lots of ravioli--why don't you come around one?"

At one we sat down to some bruschetta and some of Armando's prize winning salami along with countless slices of culatello. If you don't know what culatello is, you haven't lived--that's all I can say. It's the tenderloin of prosciutto, the single, central muscle of the leg of the pig, cured in the same way as ordinary prosciutto. Mmmm.

Then there was the ravioli in a veal sauce.

Of course, that wasn't all. Not by a long shot.

There was the meat course. Lamb cooked with olives. PLUS roast capon. Peppers stuffed with anchovies and capers and preserved in olive oil. Then fragole, strawberries. Then two large chocolate eggs were slashed open with a sharp knife, as was a finger. Ooops.

Then coffee. Then grappa.

Then I went home and took a nap.

Easter is like that in Italy.

I've been thinking lately of some of my favorite places in Italy. I'm hooked on Perugia, and Umbria in general.

Perugia is the capital of Umbria, but the population is only 160,000 or so. The city is large enough to be interesting (I spent a month learning Italian there and wasn't bored a single minute) and small enough that you never feel the grit and crime of a big urban center.

I haven't yet found a bad restaurant in Perugia. Sitting in the courtyard of the Hotel La Rosetta when the waiter brings out the whole baker's pan of truffled lasagne and cuts a piece for you is one of life's great experiences. There's nothing like a cloud of truffled steam wafting toward your nostrils. Really. La Rosetta has a huge menu that changes daily.

There's lots of ancient stuff under Perugia. In fact, if you end up in the Piazza Partigiani (there's parking there), you get to the city center via escalators that whisk up through a castle and some medieval houses, now underground. How cool is that?

And even though panhandling reaches an apex during the Perugia Jazz festival, it's worth it. Yes, there are lots of concerts you'll have to pay for--but there's a whole lotta music for the popolo in the piazze too.

If you have a car and 25 friends, you can stay in the Castello di Magrano, too. That'd be a treat!

Here's an interactive map of Perugia.

Happy travels.

Imagine--you're driving through your favorite Italian town when the light turns yellow. You've got time, so you head into the intersection and Wham! the light turns red so fast it makes your head spin.

Italy's T-Redspeed system uses three cameras to catch intersection miscreants in 3D detail and store their license plate numbers so they can be billed €150 for each infraction.

It's a high tech system that Stefano Arrighetti is responsible for programming. But alas, Stefano got greedy as Bernie Madoff and most of his victims.

He's accused of conspiring with 63 municipal police, 39 local government officials, and the managers of seven different companies in order to rig the system so that it would turn from yellow to red quicker, therefore catching more motorists. The scheme was uncovered by Lerici police chief Roberto Franzini, who noticed that the number of violations were too high for a period of months and, after some investigation, found that the lights were changing way sooner than usual. ~ Italian red-light cameras rigged with shorter yellow lights

So take care when approaching traffiic lights in Italy.

And I'm glad that all this was discovered by someone from Lerici. Lerici is a Ligurian coastal town on the gulf of poets that has a nice castle to visit. You can take a boat to the Cinque Terre from Lerici if you are so inclined, and there are no stop lights on that particular stretch of water...

The Italian city of Lucca faced accusations of "culinary racism" on Tuesday after it banned new foreign eateries from opening in its historic center. The city council recently voted to deny new licenses to any bar or restaurant whose style of cooking was non-Italian within the Renaissance-era walls encircling the city center. ~ Reuters

Well, ok, that's good for us tourists who are appauled every time some corporate house of food horrors sets down in a medieval center. The story doesn't mention if residents feel deprived of alternative cuisines, but the Tuscany regional government put out a warning against 'gastronomic or culinary' racism.

"The defense of quality is one thing, discrimination is another," Paolo Cocchi, the regional councilor for commerce, said on the region's website.

I have news for Paolo. Defense of quality is discrimination. After all, discriminating taste is seldom considered a bad attribute.

Italy has raised up its cuisine by discriminating against crap food. We haven't done enough of that in the US.

Ok, so you're a student and what you'd really like is some cheap crap food. No problem, the four kebab shops already gracing the center of Lucca can continue operating.

Usually, I wouldn't call doner kebabs crap food. I actually like them. But they're salt and fat bombs. A study in London found:

The worst offending kebabs managed 1,990 calories before salad and sauces were added and almost 350 percent of a woman's saturated fat intake. ~ Rueters

So, um, even if you're near penniless, maybe a little gastronomic discrimination is in order.

"Alitalia's seamless transition this week from being a national carrier to a private airline was a ''brilliant'' operation, according to the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA)." ~ Alitalia transition 'brilliant', IATA chief says.

Italian bureaucratic ineptitude is legendary, at least if you read reports on the web. But somehow, things do get done. Sometimes even well.

New blood is changing the way the airline operates. And that's exactly what Alitalia needed.

I think about that as the US government considers throwing vast amounts of money at bankrupt car companies who have been making cars that nobody wants for quite some time now, all because those kinds of cars make a lot of profit when you happen to sell one to an unsuspecting owner. I'm driving one now. It's a rental. It's also the biggest piece of crap I've ever driven.

It's big, but inside they've managed to make it feel cramped. The glove box is right in your lap. The doors are the thickness of a bank vault, which is supposed to make you think you're safe, but are hard to get around when you try to exit the darned car. The horn honks when you try to lock the doors. It also honks at other times when it deems necessary. Who asked for this "feature"? Certainly not the neighbors.

So what does America do when the Big Auto Makers fall into an intellectual design coma? They throw out the life preserver! Here, more of the taxpayers money! For free! Just keep up what you're doing! But do more of it!

Why not let them die and let people who want to serve the public take over and make a better product that people actually want?

I'll take an Alfa Romeo any day. And as soon as Alitalia has a non stop flight from San Francisco to Rome, I'll take that, too.

Sometimes when I go inside an Italian church known for its horde of art, I cross my fingers, hoping the art isn't a line of "Madonna with Child" kinda things.

Been done before. Lots.

Now I'm sure that the artists relished the assignment. Find their village's prettiest young thing and coaxing her into showing a great deal of cleavage (or more) for religion, art, and all that's good in the world can't be a bad way to pick up women. But the results are all a little (here he gazes towards the heavens, hoping for a lack of thunderheads) boring.

On the other hand the church has been kind to artistically challenged fools like me, introducing lots of artistic excitement in their Martyrs series. Don't you feel your heart race, just a little, when you see a young buck called Saint Sebastian leaning against a tree with five arrows sticking from various tender spots on his well-toned body, as if he has just backed away from a picnic and is gazing over the pleasant scene before him?

There are others. I'm particularly attracted, if that is the word, to Saint Agatha. If you knew her, you would be too, I'm sure. Here's a little thumbnail sketch to whet your hunger for more:

"St. Agatha’s attributes are shears, tongs, and breasts on a plate. She’s invoked against diseases of the breast, earthquakes and lightning. (And eruptions of Mt. Etna in Sicily!) Her feast day is February 5th. Agatha is the patron saint of Catania, Sicily and is one of the patron saints of Malta."

Yes, religion can be quite strange at times. In a good way, of course.

Although I didn't know it at the time, I had Saint Agatha in my viewfinder when taking this picture in the Duomo of Castell'Arquato in Northern Italy. Brutal but odd. She's totally ignoring the pincers being applied to her breasts.

If there ever was a painting that conveyed the attributes of quiet acceptance of a Holy calling, this might be it.

Anyway, if you've ever been thrilled or repulsed by a picture in a church but had no idea what was going on, then you should really check out Slow Travel Italy's Saints and Art.

That's right, Ancient Rome is getting cleaned up. There will be new lighting. They will clear away the scaffolding, the fences, the open digs.

It will again be easy to snap a picture in the forum. You won't have to find the odd angle for your shot that doesn't feature modern metal gleaming in the Roman sun.

They're even thinking about an "integrated" illumination system for the entire area. I suspect that means that during an outage, there will be blackness for as far as you can't see.

In any case, it seems to me that they're taking the Rome out of Roman. To me, Rome has always been a bubbling cauldron steaming with life, some of it ancient. I'm actually afraid that cleaning it up will make it all seem so sterile, so unreal.

Rome, unlike other capitals of culture, is based upon the working stiff. The cuisine comes from low off the hog. In fact, most of it comes from inside the hog. Get yourself over to the Testacchio district to find the "real" Roman cuisine.

So if follows (if you're still with me) that the archaeological sites should feature ferile cats, open digs, overgrown pathways and grumpy guards.

Heck, it's Rome for Pete sakes.

(Read more: Improvements to Ancient Rome)

Italia Oggi has just released its ranking of Italian provinces for quality of life. This year, Siena topped the list, rising from 6th last year.

So, if you're thinking of a long term stay in Italy, you can do worse. Then again, top quality-of-life often tracks with price-of-food-in-a-restaurant.

Ravenna rose from 8th to 5th. Ravenna is often overlooked by travelers, but if you haven't seen the mosaics, you should.

The biggest rise was Rome, which zomed from 58th to 29th position on the hit charts.

Falling hard was Bologna, which remains one of my favorite cities to visit, which went from 4th to 21st.

Source: Siena tops quality-of-life charts

Mario Resca, who was head of McDonald's in Italy for 15 years, has been appointed as Italy's director general of museums and archeological sites. It is not such a popular appointment.

An online petition against the appointment has so far attracted more than 1,000 signatures from art curators and museum directors around the world.

Mr. Resca hopes to get more visitors into Italy's museums, as well as attract manufacturers to Italy's heritage sites as backdrops for product launches, according to the Telegraph.

Does Italy need to "sell" its heritage? Why, you'd think; after all, "the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, attracted 1.5 million visitors a year when the British Museum in London pulls in close to six million."

The thing is, the population of Florence is around 364,779, according to Wikipedia. London has 20 times the population. So, in light of the size of their respective cities, the Uffizi does quite well. What would happen to Florence if the number of visitors to the Uffizi quadrupled in a year? I wouldn't want to be there in the crush, I'm telling you.

Besides, the British Museum is free to all.

You could get a lot of people to chow down on Big Macs if they were free. There's no secret to that sauce in today's world.

Benzina is gas for the car to Americans, Petrol to Brits, and the price of it is going down. Yahoo reports that recent prices have dropped to 1,17 euro, the lowest in three years.

With the Euro falling, all those economic disasters might be converging to make a vacation to Italy reasonable again. Of course, it's all a wash if the recent downturn is affecting you as well, but hey, where would you rather be in miserable times, enjoying a decent 2 Euro bottle of wine in Tuscany, or paying $9 for a bottle of miserable sludge in America?

I'd go with Tuscany. Trust me on this.

The medieval core, on the side of a hill facing the harbor, with its winding, narrow streets, is still a compelling and exhausting walk. At the top is the chapel dedicated to sailors all over the world. Take the kids. There are plenty of statues inside with featuring folks holding the severed heads of saints and sinners alike.

And the day, finally, was warm and beautiful, with threatening skies that just hung a in the sky, deep gray-blue, to enhance the photos. Travel in the off season can be a challenge, but for me a usually rewarding one.