In 1975, during a roundtrip tour of the U.S. — from sea to shining sea (to shining sea) — my brother and I pulled into Gettysburg late one evening. We found a motel that seemed tidy and inexpensive enough, and were soon asleep in our ground-floor room. When we woke the next morning, one of […]

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We were going to Italy, from Abu Dhabi, to celebrate a significant birthday, and it seemed a perfect occasion to invite some of those near and dear to us to a sort of moveable feast. In Italy. It began in Florence, moved to Siena for Il Palio and since Saturday night has continued at Villa […]

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We have been joined in San Gimignano by an Italian couple and their two young children. After a dinner (barbecued sausages and a half-dozen skewers of meat and peppers) and some very nice wine our visitors brought us, we sat down in the living room to talk about life in the UAE … and it […]

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Three of us decided to take a walk through the rolling countryside surrounding San Gimignano. The area practically calls out for a hike. Lots of up and down, but most of it not really intense, and it generally stays off paved roads — in favor of dirt tracks or rutted secondary roads leading into dense […]

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Speaking generally, Italy is a country where failure to eat what is put in front of you is often met with disappointment. Sometimes the disappointment is internalized and then becomes a bit aggressive. “You don’t like it?” (Disappointed.) Why not?” (Vaguely accusatory.) While in Florence, at a perfectly adequate restaurant, I did not feel like […]

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The world seems to be shrinking, day by day. More of it seems within reach than ever before. But plenty of nooks and crannies of human existence remain outside our body of knowledge. For instance, the Italian city of San Gimignano.

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That was the subject line on an email my daughter sent me 14 years ago. “Il Palio is Madness!” Her brief account of the horse race run inside the medieval Piazza del Campo of Siena, which she witnessed while studying in the hilltop Tuscan city in the summer of 2000 … and it put in […]

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It had to happen. In addition to the various and sundry tours of Florence, we have a semi-new option: The Dan Brown Inferno Tour. Not to be confused with Dante’s Inferno. Though in 2014, especially in English, Dan Brown’s “Inferno” might be better known than that other guy’s “Inferno”. The “other guy” being Dante Alighieri, […]

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Let’s be honest. We often don’t know what we’re looking at. The Grand Canyon. The Eiffel Tower. The treasures of Florence. A guide can enhance our understanding and appreciation of what our eyes take in. A good guide can make us see things in an entirely new way. Our group of six spent most of […]

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Modern travel is fairly astounding. When it works, of course, and it generally does.  Far more than it did in the past. Wake up in Abu Dhabi, and two cab rides, one six-hour flight and an 80-minute train ride later … you can be checking into your friend’s hotel in Florence, Italy, in plenty of […]

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