Italy - Lili on the Loose

5 01, 2015

Travel Missteps: La Befana

By Lili|January 5th, 2015|Categories: Travel, Travel Missteps|Tags: 2006, All in the family Italy 2005/2006, Christ Child, Christmas, cookies, Epiphany, Europe, guide, Hag, Halloween, Italy, Jesus, La Befana, milk, Piazza Navona, Rome, Santa Claus, Three Kings, Three Wise Man, tour, tour group, Trafalger, travel, UNESCO, UNESCO World Heritage Site, wine, Witch|0 Comments

Walking through Piazza Navona in Rome, Italy I hear the unmistakable cackling laugh of a witch! I turned towards a nearby stall and spy hundreds of flying witches hanging from the roof. Big ones, small ones. Some like an old woman, while others looked like a creepy old hag warts and all! Some even were animatronic whose eyes glowed red (and made the cackling laughter that caught my ear.) But surely this must be a mistake? For its not Halloween time, but after so soon after Christmas! I was confused but had no one to ask about this strange sight,

Souvenir Saturday: My First Snow Globe

By Lili|February 8th, 2014|Categories: Souvenirs, Travel|Tags: 1st, 2006, All in the family Italy 2005/2006, collectable, collection, Europe, glass, group, Italy, Mask, memento, memories, New Year's Day, Piazza San Marco, rain, Rialto Bridge, snow dome, snow globe, snow globes, souvenir, tour, tour group, Trafalger, travel, vaporetto, Venetian Mask, Venice|0 Comments

As I often travel during the colder, wetter, and snowier months, snow globes make a great souvenir for me to capture the memory of my travel experiences. It was New Year’s Day 2006 and I was standing under the awning of a small little shop right on the edge of Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy. I was with my mother and we were waiting for my father and little sister to return so we could board the vaporetto back to our hotel. It was alternating between rain and snow that day, and so we ducked into the shop to

Travel Missteps: Lost in Italy

By Lili|February 18th, 2013|Categories: Travel, Travel Missteps|Tags: 2005, All in the family Italy 2005/2006, Assisi, bus, Christmas, church, churches, Europe, Italy, lost, New Years Eve, police, smart car, taxi, tour, Trafalger, UNESCO, UNESCO World Heritage Site, view point|0 Comments

This is the view I should never have seen, but because I got lost I had a chance to see it. When you are on a strict timeline, getting lost can be a disaster. In late December of 2005 I was on a bus tour of Italy with my family. We were adamant that we were not "Bus Tour" people. We were use to doing things on our own. But we didn't speak any Italian so we decided to utilize a bus tour "but only for the transportation logistics". So we set out to plan down our moves in each "stop" of the tour,