recap!

Ok, hello friends and family, per my mother’s insistence I will try to update my blog more consistently. I have no idea when or what I last posted because my computer refuses to open the blogger app anymore so it will be a miracle if I can even manage to post this. Have I mentioned how much I hate computers. So I guess a quick recap… May through July I managed to cover the major spots that were on my Italian to do list: Milan, Bologna (before the earthquake),Como, Menaggio, Catania, Taormina, Palermo, all of the Aeolian islands, Rapallo, Venice, Florence, Tuscany, Naples, Pompeii, and Rome.  There is still much to see but I managed, as usual, to get side tracked in the islands, on Salina.

I think I last posted when I first arrived on Salina and then perhaps about Stromboli, so I will start off there. Stromboli was amazing and I’m going back in September with Lolo!!

Beautiful Stromboli lava tracks 

 

Baby Stromboli with lighthouse 

Go, go, go!!!

Looking down...

Looking farther down!!!

 

Sunset from the top was AMAZING! The hike down... in the dark... in the sand was another story. TERRIFYING!

I hopped a ferry back to Salina from Stromboli on June 6 or 7 and decided that I should live on the islands forever or at least until the winter time. I met Michelle and Aleccio at some point around this time and started to watch their adorable kids for a few hours a day in exchange for room and board. Aleccio is a local, born and raised (Salinian?) and Michelle is a transplant New Yorker. She has been living here about 7 years and they have 2 kids. Deal of a lifetime people.  I moved up to an apartment up on the hill under Bartolino and Bruna’s house (Aleccio’s awesome parents) and have been chilling here ever since, sort of.