Off to Bradenton tonight

We're heading down to Florida tonight, coming back home on Monday afternoon. A nice little mini-vacation before our big vacation to Italy which starts TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY! :)

Phone stores (Tim and Wind) in Venice

Just posting this link so it's easier for us to find the TIM phone store locations when we arrive in Venice.

We'll buy SIM cards as soon as we arrive so we'll have Italian numbers with data plans.

edit - Hmm, apparently Wind can provide cheaper service than Tim in many cases, so I'm adding a link to their stores in Venice.

In addition to phone calls, we'll want to use data access. Planning to use my phone as our main navigation device, and for that to work you need data access.

Slow Talk and Slow Travel web sites

I love these sites for planning trips:

Slow Travel and Slow Talk with the Slow Talk forums (or fora, if you want to use proper Latin). If not for the Slow Talk we would not have found Massimago.

And there are so many like-minded travelers on both sites, who are all about slowing down, taking it easy and enjoying what you see.

Staying in one place for a week or so, and taking various day trips is my favorite way to travel. I'm not a fan of "if it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium" sort of vacations.

Labor Day Weekend

Hard to believe that Labor Day is coming up. Jan and I are flying down to Florida on Friday night. The entire Lastort family will get together in Bradenton for what should be a very nice weekend.

Airtran flight 413 from BWI to TPA, scheduled to land around 10:30, which should get us to Bradenton no later than midnight.

Countdown to our scheduled landing in Tampa

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In Tarrytown NY this weekend

We're at Paddy and Jeff's house this weekend to finalize our plans for Venice / Veneto. We've got a bunch of things on our calendar for Venice, but nothing for Massimago, so we'll work that out today.

20 days! I can't wait!

Google Map locations of where we're staying

Apartment in Venice is here (45.442717,12.32634). Massimago is here (45.47627,11.145898).

Photos

Bought this lens for my old (purchased in 2004) D2H Nikon camera. Eventually, I'll upgrade the body, but I think an 18-300 zoom should be perfect for a vacation.

23 days until we leave

Another vacation to Italy. It's been a while, since the summer of 2007, to be precise.

I tried to blog during that trip, but didn't keep up with it very well. Going to try to do better this time around.

We flying out of JFK on Friday, 9/14/12, at 5:40 PM, on Aer Lingus. Two hour layover in Dublin, and a scheduled arrival at Marco Polo International at 11:00 AM Venice time. Total trip time is just under 12 hours. Well, that's not counting the drive from our place to Paddy's and Jeff's house in Tarrytown, and the cab ride from there to JFK.

In fact, here's a countdown to our arrival.

We'll be staying at the Apartment Smeraldo from 9/15 - 9/22, then we'll pick up a rental car and drive to Massimago, a vineyard resort in the middle of the Valpolicella, just north of Verona.