Thinking of Italy for 2011?

If so you might want to enter the Vaction In Italy Giveaway, esp if you have kids! I'm sure you'll find lots of other kid-frinedly advice on this fun and informational blog!

AND THEY'RE OFF!

No, not the horses at Churchill Downs - US!  We're leaving in a few days for the vacation of a lifetime - six weeks in Italy followed by a 15 night transatlantic cruise back to the states!  We had planned to take a month or two to travel around Italy after we old our house but the timing just didn't work out in the spring so we're doing it now.  We'll get to visit with old friends and meet new ones, see familiar places and lots and lots of new places too.  We'll be visiting the Cinque Terre, Genoa and Turin, then spending a week up in the Piemonte region.  Emilia/Romagna will take up another full week, as will Puglia, and in between we'll be staying in Umbria, our home for so many years.  We're so excited, not just to be going back to Italy, but also to be able to visit some of the places we were never able to visit while we lived there. 

NO MORE BLOGLINES!!!!

For years I've used and recommended Bloglines to keep me up-to-date with various blogs I like to follow. It's just too complicated trying to keep track of all the interesting blogs out there, some of which are published daily, while others post only randomly. Using Bloglines notifier to keep track of all my favorite blogs has been a handy tool, and now the people who run it are focusing their attention on other aspects of their internet business - meaing that I need to find a new way to track all my favorite blogs.

For now I"m going to use Google Reader simply because it's there, because I can easily import my feeds and because I'm too busy right now getting ready for our trip to Italy! Bloglines will disappear as of October 1st, so if you use Bloglines to trakc this or any other blog, make plans to esport your settings using the easy export option which is explained on the BLOGLINES site.

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

We received this "Welcome Friends" plaque, made in Deruta, from our good friends Greg and Marguerite.  It was just what the front door needed! 

The other door plaque with our name was made here in Louisville at LOUISVILLE STONEWARE. We received it when we bought our very first house back in 1990.

I'M NOT A MORNING PERSON

THE BLUE ANGELS

Here's a great video of a Blue Angels show, way better than the short videos I took....

AN EXTENDED VACATION

Our six weeks in Pensacola are almost at an end. I can't believe I won't be able to see the Blue Angels on a weekly basis!  :(  The Pensacola area has lots of stuff going on - we've been attending the weekly (free!) concerts in Seville Square on Thursdays,



the Bands on the Beach concerts on Pensacola Beach on Tuesdays,



and the concerts each weekend at the Portofino Boardwalk. There's just so much going on around here, lots of it free! We visited the lighthouse at NAS Pensacola as well as the Naval Air Museum, also located at NAS Pensacola.

The Naval Air Museum is amazing - something for everyone. If you only have a passing interest in aviation there are plenty of displays and interactive activities, and if you're interested in learning more there are many videos playing throughout the museum, as well as the guided tours. The tours are led by volunteers, who obviously have a love of aviation, and the guide we had was an aviator himself and had been flying since the 1940s. He was so knowledgeable and his personal recollections about so many of the planes made our tour really fascinating.



There's also an IMAX theater at NAS Pensacola with three different movies playing throughout the day. When the Blue Angels practice (usually on Tuesday and Wednesday) the museum is much more crowded, but the bonus is that after the Wednesday practices the Blue Angel pilots come to the museum to sign autographs, pose for pictures and answer questions.

We drove to Perdido Key one day and didn't think it was as nice as Pensacola - and it's much further away from.....anything. If you're a beach bum and want to laze away the days by the pool or on the beach I guess that really doesn't matter, but if you want a variety of things to see and do Pensacola seems to have it all. If I were planning another vacation to the Pensacola area one of the first places I'd look is the BLUE ANGELS WEBSITE, just to make sure they'll be here at the same time!