In the days leading up to our arrival in Naples, what I most hoped for was for warmer weather and sunshine. We loved Matera, but it was chilly and rainy most days. It was a low bar for success that Naples vaulted over. We arrived in Naples and returned the rental car at the airport…

Matera is a place that not many casual tourists to Italy visit. It isn’t on the train line and even a bus takes a while to get there from any major city. But when I was researching this leg, Matera shot to the top of my list of places I wanted to stop with its…

I’m skipping over writing about our 6-day trip to the UK. To be honest, I still don’t know what to say about it. It became slightly marred by the UK’s unclear COVID laws, but we definitely had some good times there and a couple of great follow-up interviews with two of the subjects of the…

Padova (the Italian spelling of Padua) was the perfect first long stay for our return to international travel. In addition to our wonderful day trips to Modena, Bologna, Venice, and Ferrara, we saw and did tons of awesome stuff in this university town. Here are our experiences with the sites of Padova: University of Padova/Palazzo…