Italy 2014 - first steps

I just started looking at Italy today. We might go there next year.

Now I don't know, because my jury duty was transferred to july/august  2014 ... that is upsetting. People spend years as citizens and never get called ... I have been a citizen for 14 months... and there is my jury duty paper...

But, hey, let's plan. Let's plan and see what happens. What can not happen is have the time and not be able to go for lack of planning.

So, here is where I have started.

Italy - agriturismo on bing gave me the first ideas. I already knew I wanted to see Tuscany, because of the Brazilian novela Passione that I have watched recently.

http://www.agriturismo.it/en/
http://www.agriturismo.net/

Then I tried key words Italy itinerary:

http://www.justitaly.org/ - this site gives you plenty of info on travelling to Italy in general. Cities, getting around, even education and jobs. You know, just in case I fall in love with it and decide to stay...

http://www.italylogue.com/planning-a-trip/italy-itinerary-the-perfect-two-weeks.html - this site is cool because it gives you ideas of itneraries.

I checked out this book on Amazon called Backroads Norther and central Italy from DK Eyewitness... it looked decent, so I ordered it. It will give us ideas.

Anyway, here is what I knew off-hand:
I'd like to see Venezia .... I'd like to see Tuscany ...
There is also the Amalfi Coast, and Pompeii - that we have seen in Rick Steves shows.
Dean wants to see small villages. My aunt Lea gave us a lot of names of small towns in the tuscany area.
I'd love to visit " fair Verona" from Romeo and Juliet... but only if there are things to recognize from the story... if not, then ... I don't know.

On the backroads book I saw there was also the alps ... omg!!! they are beautiful! I want it........... You know just like when we were in Scotland... I had to go and touch the mountains. Touch, touch, touch...
So may be we want to include the alps.

On the websites we saw this beautiful coastal place called Cinqueterre... They said it has been getting more and more touristy ... that's just too bad ... we want to go to places where tourists don't go. You know, where the real people live ... a place like here, Westfield, Granville, tolland ... just your normal everyday life.
But cinqueterre is beautiful, so we might try to include a day there or so...


Maybe the little towns tia lea mentioned to us is more real life stuff.
Volterra, Montalcino, monteriggioni, Castellina in Chianti - Colle di Val d'Elsa - Montepulciano -san gimignano ...
Here are the websites from two of them:
http://www.sangimignano.com/en/
http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Italy/Tuscany/Monteriggioni-147674/TravelGuide-Monteriggioni.html

then I keyed "Small villages in italy" and found this website:
http://www.italiantourism.com/borghi.html

If you speak portuguese, there is a website about rome http://dicasderoma.com.br/ that Tia Lea suggested I look at... Maybe your webbrowser can translate it for you... It looks interesting.

So far, we have a starter list of places we want to see:
Venice
Verona
the alps
Cinqueterre
Pisa
Florence
small villages like monteriggione
rome
pompeii ...

It might be unrealistic for two weeks, but hey, you've gotta start somewhere. We will polish this list , add and drop stuff as planning takes shape...

And here I stop for the night.

Till next week