I knew this would be a particularly challenging “What We Learned” post to write, because so much time has passed since the leg (which took place from August to November 2025, and I’m writing this in August 2026) and because we’ve become pretty adept at the general mechanics of our travel life and know what…
Category: Europe
FAQ – How Did Our Sixth Europe Leg Add Up?
Once again, I did a pretty good job estimating our expenses for Leg 17, and we came in just $123 under budget, a less than 1% deviation. We’d saved so much in the early part of the leg that we were able to do more than expected in the final three weeks of our trip…
When in Rome (for a week)
We closed out our 2025 Europe leg (Leg 17 if you’re counting along) with eight nights in Rome. We’d loved our time in Rome in 2021 and were eager to return. Last time we stayed in the neighborhood of Monteverde, which we loved, but even then we thought we’d like to try staying closer to…
The Towers of San Gimignano
We spent three days in the beautiful Tuscan town of San Gimignano, nickname “San G,” in early November 2025. Although nine months have passed since then, I want to make sure to create a record of our time there in this blog for two reasons. First, we had a wonderful time and blogging about it…
A Sweet Life in Perugia
I posted my Perugia: We’re Home post over six months ago and it has been nearly that long since we left that wonderful Italian town. My first post covered our first two weeks there and so this one will stick to the other two. Six months later we still look back so fondly on our…
Day Trip to Arezzo
Writing these posts so many months after the experience has required a bit of detective work. Luckily I keep a lot of records and between my daily family emails, expense log, and photo time stamps, I’ve been generally able to recreate each day. We visited Arezzo on October 28, nearly four months ago. Arezzo Arrival…
Day Trip to Siena
Our second daytrip from Perugia was to the medieval Tuscan town of Siena. Although it is not on the same train line as Perugia, we were able to book an 80-minute Flixbus for 7 a.m. with a return at 7:10 p.m. It was a long day, but provided plenty of time to see the main…
Day Trip to Assisi and Spello
One reason we chose Perugia as our home base for Italy was its access to many other great Italian towns we really wanted to see. Our list was long and so we got started almost right away four days after our arrival in Perugia in mid-October. The very top of our list was Assisi, home…
Overnight Ferry to Bari and Ancona
It feels like a long time ago that we left Tirana for Italy on October 6, because it was. Over 100 days ago in fact. That’s how far behind I am on this blog. But I’m going to do my best to remember and capture the wonderful time we had during our first days in…
Our Last Two Weeks in Tirana
My We’re Home post from Tirana was a bit of a downer. We really didn’t love the city and it had quite a few challenges. I’m sorry to say that the second half of our time there did not get much better, though I think we coped better. We certainly explored more than our first…