If you want free bathrooms and cheap espresso while in Italy make sure to rent a car, because the only places where the restrooms are free in the entire country are on the "autostrada" the huge toll road that blasts up the center of the country. The trouble is that by driving the autostrada you will miss all of the Italy that you came to see. It's like driving up 28th street on the way to Estes Park and wondering as you pass the McDonald's and Burger King what is so special about Boulder.

If you don't mind paying $1.60 (1 euro) to go to the public restrooms every once in awhile and travel light enough to walk a couple of blocks to your hotels in each amazing town then definitely travel by train. Every train station delivers you to the absolute center of the action. City sites, festivals, night life, all are almost always just blocks away.

Prepare for this type of travel like you would for a home football game...please remember all these lessons were obtained through painful experience.

1) Travel light; the most important Italian train travel advice is just six words "one rollie bag, one shoulder bag". You think you will be able to manuever that one small extra piece without any trouble, dream on. Try practicing with six minutes sprints we call "frantic train connections" . Using your rollie, the shoulder bag and just one small additional bag, head over to the UMC and time yourself for three rounds of the following...start at the front desk, race down the main steps, out the lower door, across the outdoor covered walk, then back in through the Food Court (most realistic if done at class changing time) then back up the steps to the Ballroom main doors, if they are locked go back around. Still want what's in that extra bag?

2) If a taxi driver approaches you, run. No legitimate self respecting taxi driver would ever get out of his/her car for any reason, period. If a driver has singled you out, gotten out of his car and approached you, you can be sure of only one thing...it is going to cost you. Just say no and get in the cab with the bored and surly driver waiting on the corner.

3) Enjoy the ride, no other form of travel allows you to comfortably fly across the land at 100 mph while drinking great wine and enjoying the company of your fellow travelers...oh and "go" on the train, it's free.

This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.

Around any turn

Amazing, amazing, just amazing. Every single turn in the Dolomites prompts the same response. After weeks of relentless sun and heat in Southern Italy we swallowed hard and rented a tiny Smart car that just fit us and the albatross, we call “the bag” and headed north.

Our last experience with a rental car in Italy had been an unmitigated disaster. Twenty years at rental car desks refusing the additional insurance had become a habit. I did it again, not considering that I was no longer employed or that my home car insurance was in sleep mode. Anyone looking at all the dented brand new cars in Italy would recognize that this is a hazardous place for smooth metal panels. Spend seven days in the Walmart parking lot, increase the speed tenfold and you get a feel for driving here. $3000 poorer from the last experience we were fully insured this time as we headed off on the relative sanity of the Italian Autostrada, a 600 mile long toll road that sweeps up the agricultural center of Italy all the way to the Alps. We just needed mountains and cooler weather.

We overnighted in Bologna for the simple reason that I had read about it in John Grisham’s book “The Broker”. I think I’ll use his books as travel guides from now on.. Who would have thought a town named after a luncheon meat would offer so much. The huge historic area, off limits to all but a few local cars, was a warren of beautiful squares, parks, pubs, cafes and markets. Pocketed with so many Medici towers and churches it looked like a playful giant had collected them over time and carefully placed all perfectly in one spot., except for this one crazily tilted tower that makes the leaning tower of Pisa look upright.

It’s the walkways that most impress. Miles on miles of soaring, vaulted, arched, covered walkways. These colonnaded walkways with mosaic tile floors remain cool and breezy even on the hottest day. Think the UMC fountain area on steroids.

Topping it all off was the two mile long covered stairway visible from any high point in the city that lead up the green foothills to the Cathedral of San Lucca. Imagine a gorgeous covered breezeway from Pearl Street to the Amphitheater on Flagstaff Mountain and you get the picture.

We headed north again across the one hundred miles of flat plains between Bologna’s foothills and the Alps backing Romeo and Juliet’s Verona. As the highway headed up the valley and the sky became deeper blue and our tiny car’s inadequate air conditioning finally caught up. Sixty miles later we were in Bolzano. We bailed ourselves out of the Autostrada “58 Euros, per favore” and turned up the hill at the first “Pensione” sign we came to. Within minutes we had spiraled our way up a one lane highway that we would call a bike path back home. In just minutes we found ourselves on an incredibly green alpine shelf backed by soaring granite spires and picturesque mountain farms. We were hanging over the valley below, with jaw dropping mountains all around us and yet we were still 2000 ft below Boulder. It was better than home, it looked like the 12,000 foot alpine meadows you find on West Maroon Pass, but we could breathe!