With so many visitors to Italy, I grow a bit tired trying to explain the tipping thing. Time & again. Inside & Out. And, no matter how much I blather, there they go, leaving tips and ruining the market for the rest of us. So, as one of my periodic Public Service Announcements, here it is, YOUR GUIDE TO TRAVELING IN ITALY – TIPPING – Do you? Or, don’t you?
Like any good practices, let’s start with a definition of terms:

TIP: “a gift of money for a service, especially...

Michelle Obama & kids visited the Pantheon today. It has been twittered, and it's probably TOTALLY UNTRUE, in the friend of a friend of a friend sort of variety of info that our TOTALLY COOL FIRST LADY donning black leggings - leggings!- under a black dress asked for a doggy bag at the restaurant.
You mean to tell me, my blog isn't required reading prior to a Presidential presence in Italia???!!! I mean, is she a midnight snacker? Did Barack call her up and say, honey can you pick me...

At face value, it sounds almost too good to be true: Trenitalia has announced that it will offer cheap train fares just like the discount airlines. This is great news, except that will probably signify that traveling around Easter or Christmas could cost you the equivalent of a round trip airfare to Sydney.

I haven’t determined whether and by how much I’ll get penalized for being a last minute buy-at-the-station, but, I can imagine it won’t be pretty. And, considering that the online...

Well, it looks like the recession is in full swing, taking its ugly toll on those that we love the most…the tourists. Italy depends on them for much of the GNP, and yet, here we are, shaking them down to their very last centesimo. As the school of thought goes, ‘what the heck, we’ll never see them again!’ Hardly. Given the ease of travel these days, and the even easier, internet-as-word-of-mouth, you’d think people in the hospitality world would be a tad more…hospitable.

Recently,...

You may have noticed I’ve been playing hooky for awhile, but, hopefully all will be forgiven as I have been picking up great experiences (and some not so great - like getting stuck in a passageway at Rome's airport) for the blog…But first, the good news (which does not include finding snackpack-sized Oreos in every airport and bar these days. Although it was seriously about time. I think Marco Polo even with his 20 year stint in China brought noodles here sooner):

While driving to...