Re: Fiat 500
 

Make sure you check with your doctor before engaging in sexual activity.

Re: Fiat 500
 

exactly: [insert penske joke] ZING! [/penske joke]

Re: Fiat 500
 

OMG. I totally, like, laughed out loud in my office. To.tal.ly.

Re: Fiat 500
 

paigow called, this got botd

Re: Fiat 500
 

I've rarely been prouder....

Old News
 

I am taking off again. (I know, keep your jealous, nasty thoughts to yourselves.) A trip mostly focused on going to countries in and around Europe to which I have not been. Helpful advice, tips, recommendations, etc. on the following are welcomed:

Iceland
Andorra
Luxembourg
Liechtenstein
Slovenia
Parts of Italy to which I have not been (Trieste, Venice, Bologna, Naples, Bari, Sicily)
San Marino
Montenegro
Macedonia
Albania
Cyprus
Malta
Algeria
Morocco

Re: Old News
 

I'd say condoms, z-paks and dolla dolla bills y'all.

Re: Old News
 

Does that answer depend at all on the countries Less listed?

Re: Old News
 

Great Houllami (spelled various ways) cheese in Cyprus. Which side are you going to? I've always wanted to make it to Malta and Siciliy, for the Arabic influences.

Re: Fiat 500
 

Congrats on the Timbers year so far. We watched ya'll last night. Looks good.

Re: Old News
 

Two of the best meals I've ever eaten in my life were in Bologna and Venice. Alas, I couldn't tell you where they were aside from the Bologna restaurant didn't have a sign and seemed to be in a back alley, and the Venice one seemed to be on the lagoon side and required a lot of back tracking and cursing to get to. But pretty much every venture in Venice requires backtracking and cursing. I went to the Bologna restaurant with a friend who was a professor at the University, and I don't think we actually ordered anything other than to say that the American's weren't all that interested in the horse carpaccio. 16 years later, and I still remember how awesome the meal was. The Venice restaurant probably had its own fishing boat, but it was shellfish soup that blew us away.

Also, I don't know when your trip is, but I really loved Italy in December. Not as many tourists, towns decorated for the people who live there, etc. Venice, in particular, was awesome. The sun set at around four, it seemed, and the fog rolled in shortly afterwards. We stumbled up on a night market in a little piazza where the vendors were selling all sorts of treasures and baubles at around 11:00 pm. When we went back the next morning, there was no trace of it. I'd been to Venice before that trip in the spring, and it seemed much more Disneylandish then. In the winter, it felt both real and somewhat otherworldy. I loved it.

Re: Old News
 

This year I met my mother's Australian family. All these Calabrese. My mom and these guys are the children of immigrants from Caulonia, but these guys still own the ancestral home. I'm going next summer and so I've been checking it out. 5 k from the sea. An average summer day: walk to the beach, drink, eat, tan and bullshit. Early dinner then nap. At 9 start promenading all through the tiny town, eating and drinking and trying to screw, depending on ones age.

The problem is the closest hotel seems to be 90 miles away. I think that's true for a lot of the towns on that coast, so you may need to pre-rent a flat.

Re: Fiat 500
 

Soooooo much better than the last two years. The former coaching regime was maybe more personable, but Porter Ball beats the hell out of the 1980s Scottish long-ball approach. I think we're actually for-real.

Re: Old News
 

I've not been to Andorra, but I've heard that it's not really worth a visit. Lots of traffic from discount shoppers and relatively ugly architecture. Although I haven't heard anything that suggests the completist needs to stay away.

It's been 25 years since I was in Slovenia, but even then (still under Tito) it was more prosperous and lush that the rest of Yugoslavia. I've got nothing specific (that will be a trend), except that Bled was truly beautiful.

Venice is, of course, spectacular. The issue tends to be the crowd and, sometimes, the heat. We were pretty happy with our hotel last time were there, which was a great location. We were actually in an annex around the corner from the main building with windows overlooking one of the side canals. Unfortunately, I'm not now sure if it was the Londra Palace or the Hotel Vivaldi. I'm leaning toward the latter. Years ago we tried staying on the Lido, but even though it can be a bit quieter, I don't really recommend it.

I loved Sicily, which was part of my bar trip. Particular highlights were Cefalu, Erice and Taormina. We were less taken by the bigger cities, although I found Palermo pretty interesting, primarily for the combination of stateliness and crumbling. At the time, there wasn't a lot of English in the city. When we asked about parking while checking in at our hotel they had to call out the maid, who spoke more English that the front desk staff, to try to explain.

I was in San Marino when I was five, and I think there is still a picture of it handing on my parents' wall, but I couldn't tell you anything about it.

Re: Old News
 

I am kind of meh on Naples itself. Been there a few times and never been especially impressed, but as you indicate you've not been in the area before, I assume you willl want to see Pompeii. They've dug up a bunch more since the last time I was there. Also taking the ferry across to Capri is nice. There's not a lot to do there, but it's pretty, there are some nice restaurants with good views, and you can either drive tot the top on some hairpin turn roads (that used to have no guard rail, super fun when you see your driver drink from a suspicious looking flask while driving) or do the cable car and spare yourself.

Morocco was fun, but we took the boat over when we were staying in Malaga, so I stayed in Tangiers only, and was pretty glad I didn't try that on my own (but you aren't a 25 yo chick, so you probably wouldn't share my issues with the place). I do have a nice rug in my study as a souvenir, and I am pretty sure that they favorably indicated the value on the customs form when they shipped it over.