2011 Amalfi Coast Adventures: Leaving for Italy . . .

Last time I was in Italy was in 2007 when I spent two wonderfully long (and yet not long enough) weeks in Venice.  Since then, I have been aching to return!  After 4 long years, the day has finally arrived. Tomorrow I'm off to Italy!

On the eve of my trip I can't help but to reflect back to when I first joined Slow Travel, which was in 2004.  Slow Travel/Talk is an awesome website that was created by Pauline Kenny who now runs Slow Europe. It is here where I first learned that the best way to get the most of my travel experiences was to slow down and see less.

I honestly don't think that I fully grasped that concept until my trip last year when I spent two weeks in Amsterdam and one week in Berlin.  On this trip, I didn't do everything that I wanted to do and I didn't get to see all of my "must see's.  And I discovered that seeing and doing everything on my trips wasn't as important to me as it once was.  I enjoyed being able to live in my neighborhood in Mitte and observe and live daily life there, even going to the same cafe and restaurants as a regular.  And even at a slower pace, I still managed to satisfy my interests in history, art and culture.

This year I wanted to slow down my travels even further and spend the entire three weeks in "one" location.

This is a re post of a PhotoHunt theme I did for Triangle.  I took this photo while walking along a small side road near the town of Arisaig in the Highlands of Scotland.  Don't you love the urgency of the message.  I think it speaks volumes.  My motto of late is to try not to put things off for another day, because I just never know what's around that curb. 

Many thanks and appreciation to Pauline for creating Slow Travel, to the wonderful moderators and members of the Slow Talk Community, to my friends and family who support and understands my passion and to my very special blogging friends who continue to inspire my travels.

It will be a long travel day tomorrow but the good news is soon I'll be back in Italy where I'm going to enjoy learning about history, seeing beautiful art, churches and sunsets, eating some delicious pizza and gelato and I hope to enjoy a lot of what the Italians have a saying for . . . .

“il dolce far nienete”
The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

Thank you again everyone. I hope to be blogging and checking in on PhotoHunt while on the road, but just in case I'm not able to, I have scheduled my PhotoHunt pics.

Wishing all of you and your families a wonderful Thanksgiving Holidays! 

Ciao for now. :)