Italy Adventure 2019

Hello Faithful Followers. Well, it’s just about time to hit the road (well, actually the friendly skies) again but before we leave tomorrow (5/19) I thought I’d get you caught up with what we’ve been up to since last May when our 2018 European adventure ended.

We got the keys to our house (which had been a rental for 8 years) on June 1st and realized that our tenants hadn’t taken care of the house as well as we thought. Long story short, it took 3 weeks and over $7000 to repair the damage they left. It was very disappointing but other than painting the basement, the house is just as beautiful now as when I left it in 2010.

We celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary in Chicago in September. We spent several nights at the Palmer House and enjoyed an anniversary dinner at the Signature Room on the 96th floor of the Hancock Building. It was a wonderful way to celebrate.

If you remember, I started having hip pain about halfway through our 2018 European Adventure. By the time I got home it was pretty bad so after going to ortho and PT (which unfortunately failed miserably) we decided that I had no choice but to have my hip replaced. It was hard to wrap my mind around that as it takes most people years to go from start of pain to surgery. For me, it was 2 months. By the time I accepted that I had to have surgery, I already had my cataract surgeries scheduled so the hip had to wait until October. But the procedure went well, and I recovered in no time at all. After just 8 weeks I was at the golf course, swinging the club like a champ. Well, not really as I’m not that good, but at least I was pain free.

In December, we went to Florida for about 10 days, stopping at many National Parks on the trip. We also checked out several 55+ communities but have decided with my arthritis we really need the drier climate of Arizona or Nevada.

The beginning of February we headed to Cancun for 5 days. We had bought one of the all-inclusive packages the year before and finally had a chance to use it. Neither of us had been there before so it was fun to explore a new location. Unfortunately, a few days before our trip my right ankle started giving me problems. I’ve known for years that I have a torn tendon in that ankle, but it hadn’t flared up in a long time. Well, it flared up quite badly. All during the trip my foot was the size of a football, but I didn’t let that stop me from enjoying the warm weather.

After we got home, I headed to podiatry and yet another long story short, I had to have a posterior tibial tendon repair done on my right ankle. In case you’re keeping score, that’s 4 surgeries (2 cataracts, a hip and an ankle) in six months. This time, it was a more difficult recovery and even 8 weeks after surgery, I can still only walk for 30-45 minutes at a time before I have to rest. But that’s okay. I may rest a lot on this trip but I’ll be resting in Italy so who cares!

Just so you don’t think the year was all about me, here’s what happened with Peter….absolutely nothing. The year really was all about me! And I’m getting pretty tired of it, so I’m looking forward to a quieter year with fewer surgical procedures. Actually, no surgical procedures would suit me just fine.

Tomorrow we head back to Europe for our 2019 adventure. This time we’re going back to Italy, starting in Rome and going south. We plan to explore off the beaten path in Rome for 3 days before picking up the car and heading south. We spent a week in Naples in 2016 but there are still things there to see so we’ll visit again. But we don’t want to drive into Naples (no sane person wants to drive into Naples) so we’re staying in Caserta and taking the train down. It’s only 30 minutes so it will be an easy commute. After that, we’ll head to Salerno and explore the Almalfi Coast from the water before heading to Sicily. I’m hoping I can find my old apartment so I can show Peter where I used to live. Maybe my neighbor will still live there. It would be so fun to see Annamaria again.

We plan to take a couple of days for a side trip to Malta, then head back to the mainland to explore the Puglia region. I lived in Italy for over 2 years while I was in the Navy, and I’ve never been to the heel of the boot. The we’ll head back north, driving along the Adriatic.

That’s our general itinerary but if you’ve been following us on our other adventures, you know that we tend to go where the spirit moves us. We pick up the car on the 24th from Rome and have to be in a Hilton resort in Tuscany on 6/21. What happens in between depends on weather and where we decide to go.

So….stay tuned and we hope you join us on our travels.

Love to all,

Lynn and Peter