Babu Our first stop on our little trip through Italy was Florence. There are new fast trains from Rome to Florence which arrive in less than an hour and a half. Before we knew it we were lugging our bags past Santa Maria Novella and over the Arno to our guesthouse. I have to admit that […]
Tag Archives: Italy
Florence.
24-Jul-16Backpacking with Bambini.
22-Jul-16http://ifcus.org/2008/03/24/home-sweet-home/ I consider myself an old pro at backpacking – I started traveling in Europe with a backpack in 1994, coming back many times (never gone longer than eight months, but that’s still a pretty long time), and doing a lot of pack-hiking trips in the U.S. When I do long-distance biking, I strap a backpack […]
Falcons with Human Breasts.
11-Jul-16Spotted walking down the Via Giulia today in Rome: a pair of falcons with human breasts, sitting atop pilasters on the Palazzo Falconieri. Apparently this oddity is the work of the ever-odd Borromini. Borromini has never been a favorite of mine, and this is no favorite of mine either, but its weirdness is noticeable. One […]
Will Rome Still Be Rome?
29-May-16We expected trouble when we boarded the plane with our four-month-old twins. It was their first flight, a nine-hour transatlantic redeye to Rome. It seemed so obvious that it would be a miserable trip that my boss had given us a travel gift: a pair of talismans with a glass depiction of an eye, to […]
The View From My Window.
29-May-16It’s been 8 years since I was last in Europe; time for a revisit. This summer we are spending in Rome, working for the Paideia Institute, and toting around our two five-month-olds. Rome is a city I know well, and it’s full of ghosts; some are mine, and some belong to us all.