Mouse and Marmot

Travel Photography: Brilliant Security

Marmot found this amazing combination of colors on a wall in Mazatlan.

Travel Inspiration: Videos

Whether you're looking for your next destination or planning an upcoming adventure, Lonely Planet has some fun, informative videos available on YouTube.

One of our favorites is this tattoo festival in Thailand. 

National Geographic is know for its amazing photography, but they also have more than 1,000 short videos to inspire you. 

Monday Morning Reading: Travel Blogs

While Mouse & Marmot are off chasing grizzly bears, why don't you check out some of our favorite travel blogs?

The Professional Hobo - Ever dream of spending weeks, months, or even years on the road? Nora quit her business to do just that. She has some good information on how to connect with people during these extended stays as well as how to make enough money to survive.

Nerd's Eye View - This one is written by a local lady who is an excellent writer. The link I've provided here takes you to some traveler's resources she's compiled.

The Art of Nonconformity - Chris Guillebeau is working on seeing every country in the world. He spends hours in some countries and days in others.

Enjoy!

Detour

Arrowed!, originally uploaded by margolove.

Folks, sorry to tell you this, but we overbooked this flight to Italy. As a result, we'll be taking a slight detour this week...

Coming Up For Air

Underwater, originally uploaded by marmot_oo7.

We'll be coming up for some air after a busy week - so more Italy posts coming soon.

In the meantime - a mini product review. This picture was taken with my Olympus Stylus Tough camera. It can go underwater. And in the snow (has a great snow preset, too). And withstand a few hundred pounds of force (haven't tested that one yet). It feels like a tank (very reassuring). It fits in my pocket.

Highly recommended if you are anything like me and:
a) You are in love with water in all its forms
b) You drop/spill things often
c) You don't want to worry about your camera outdoors
d) All of the above

Italy: Itinerary

Writing, originally uploaded by Flagstaff Mouse.

Normally, we don't micro-plan our trips. We're big on day-dreaming and learning enough about where we're going that we won't be lost when we show up. But buying a guidebook and making a list of the main sights we want to see is about as much hard planning as we get into. When we went to Greece (a discussion for the future) we hopped on a ferry when we felt like moving on and rented private rooms from people at each dock.

However, with four people - one who had "private room with private bath" as a requirement - we didn't have much choice. With museum tickets and Easter and almost-high-season in the equation, reserving things was a must.

Once we booked our tickets, we used a combination of the Rick Steves guides and the internet to plan. The two hardest things were working around closing days/times and judging how long it would take us to do each thing.

I ran across TripIt, a build-your-own itinerary site, which turned out to be a great resource for our final itinerary. Here is the itinerary we got on the plane with.

Did we follow it exactly? Of course not. I think I was born with some gene that makes me unable to follow things like recipes and itineraries. So, if you are like me and itineraries make you shudder, I will say that it is much more flexible than it looks. Instead of needing to consult the book every time we had an extra hour or two, we already had a list of things that would be a) interesting and b) open.

A note about TripIt: We were able to share the itinerary with friends and family. This meant that when the earthquake hit, my mom knew that we were scheduled to be in Rome, so she worried a lot less than she normally would have.

We found that we were able to fit more than we had guessed into our days, so...

Coming Up: A list of what we actually ended up doing along with our ratings & some more details about our favorite parts of the trip.

Italy: Cortona, A Taste of Tuscany

Morning in Tuscany, originally uploaded by marmot_oo7.

As the sun fills the valley below with soft, golden light, the town is still sleeping. She is dreaming about the time before the tourists and automobiles. Her snores are cooing pigeons, her breaths the wind through the blossoming fruit trees. Nothing else can be heard. Cats prowl on noiseless paws looking for leftovers – and pigeons. 

Church bells suddenly ring out, breaking the hush – a Tuscan alarm clock. It's seven o'clock. But the town doesn't jump out of bed. She stretches and yawns, still wondering why tourists need escalators when the ancianas who have negotiated her steep hills for centuries never did. One of these white-haired ladies pushes open her shutters – sending the pigeons off in a squeaking flutter of wings. The cats look up with interest. 

And then the town opens her eyes and smiles. Sun beams onto the church. Sparrows swoop in, chirping with glee as they swirl through the air above the Chiesa San Marco. The sparrows seem to say, “Buon giorno! Wake up! Wake up!” Cars appear from nowhere, snaking their way through the narrow streets. Whining as they strain up the more than thirty-degree slope. A man huffs his way up the hill, attempting to jog. “Ciao,” he gasps, pumping his strong legs against the stones. Delivery vans drop off crates of fresh fruit and vegetables. Street cleaners move through with their brooms, even though there is not much to clean. Perhaps they are just practicing for when the real tourist season starts.

This is the time to be up and about in the Tuscan hill-town of Cortona. The smell of fresh-baked bread leads you past the colorful clotheslines to the few shops that are open. Two bakeries provide bread and pastries for the handful of caffes. If you are a protein-eater, you won't find eggs here until noon – but if you ask nicely, one of the caffe owners may be willing to make you an omelette. And you will be quite satisfied come dinnertime when you can order a bistecca the size of your dinner plate.

Only one thousand people live within the walls of this town, which clings to the hillside like the lichen that clings to the red-tile roofs of the houses. An old fortress stands guard over them all. For three Euro you can climb up to the top story of this ancient building. Atop the crumbling stones, you are Maid Marian or Robin Hood, looking out at the ivy-covered walls that embrace the jumble of buildings and winding streets. From here you have the best view of Cortona. People move through the street. Dogs bark. The fragrance of earth and flowers rises up with the distant hum of machinas. The surrounding towns, look like red poppies strewn in the impossibly green valley below.

The spring rain has turned grass a deep, electric green. It seems as if someone Photoshopped the entire region, cranking up the saturation until it looks almost unnatural. The dusty-looking olive trees and puffy, white blossoms of fruit trees stand out in stark contrast against this atomic green backdrop. That is the only atomic thing you will find in this town, however. The three flags that Cortona flies are for Europe, Italy and Peace.

The massive city walls used to protect the citizens from neighboring hill towns, but now just serve as a romantic backdrop for sleepy Cortona. They are still impressive, especially when you consider that many of them are 2,500 years old, dating back to the Etruscans – the first peoples to settle this region. Beyond the walls are other, smaller towns. Some, like Torreone, are not much more than a cafe where thirsty bikers stop for some acqua while the local mailman sips a glass of wine.

A hilly, but beautiful, two-kilometer walk from Cortona's walls takes the adventurous visitor to the Ermeo de le Celle. The Celle is an old monastery that is still in use today. On the way there, you may catch glimpses of tents through the trees. These brightly-colored squares dot an open, grassy slope like wildflowers. Church and scout groups gather around a park, cooking lunch atop stone platforms. The view they get is spectacular.

A narrow road winds down from a cross at the top of the hill, past an olive grove to a bridge. Flowers line the road, placed there lovingly by robed monks. Across the small river, the residential part of the monastery rises up as if it were carved out of the cliffs. A waterfall feeds the river, tumbling over rocks and past a shimmering willow tree. Sitting there soaking in the quiet, it is easy see why St. Francis of Assisi spent time here, meditating along the banks of the river.

After the walk back, odds are you will be feeling hot and dusty, despite the paved road. The best way to alleviate this problem is a stop to the Dolce Vita gelateria. Gelato generally tastes pretty good after nearly 5 kilometers of walking in the hot sun, but this is some of the best stuff in Italy. Ice cream enthusiasts will probably end up going for seconds of this creamy, refreshing treat.

As the sun works its way down, the smell of woodsmoke filters up from the houses in Camucia, the town below where the train stops on its way between Rome and Florence. Shops that closed for siesta open up again for a few more hours. Families and couples stroll down the one flat street, Via Nazionale, browsing the art galleries and pottery shops. Children play soccer in the parking lots – the closest thing to a field the town can offer. Swallows dart above them, catching bugs in the pink twilight.

By dark, restaurants are about the only thing left open. Most are filled with tourists enjoying classic, flavorful Tuscan recipes. Some of the locals can be found sipping wine or coffee on the patios. The cats begin prowling again. Church bells stop ringing to preserve the quiet. By 11 pm, Cortona, content, closes her eyes and is asleep.

# # #

Coming up: Our Italy itinerary with ticketing links

Italy Planning: Money-Saving Tips

Jan weighs in before our flight home, originally uploaded by Flagstaff Mouse.

Here is a list of ways we saved money on our trip to Italy. We spent 10 full days in the country with two days of traveling on either end. As you'll see from the itinerary I'll post tomorrow or Friday, we got our fill of art and history and museums on this trip.

Tickets:

• Reserve transportation tickets on VeniceConnected. They offer a discount if you reserve online and some things are discounted for seniors and children. You will have to pay a foreign transaction fee, but you make up the difference if you enough discounted tickets. The public transportation pass covers the vaporettos (water taxis) and pays for itself quickly.

• Reserve museum tickets on actual websites. Reserving tickets online is worth the extra fee (usually 1-5 Euro) because you skip the enormous lines. April is still considered off-season, but the lines were plenty long. However, be careful of what site you use to book your tickets. Some charge exorbitant booking fees – we'll list which sites we used when we post our itinerary.

• Museum passes. Check to make sure you are seeing more than one museum on the pass first. If so, you can save a lot of time and money by having the pass. (You get to skip the line in most museums).

• Roma pass (get the one that includes transportation passes). This covers a lot of museums, buses and the metro. You can find out what is covered online, but you may as well wait to buy it in Rome since you have to pick it up from a TI (Tourist Information) anyway.

• Ride buses or walk. Not only does this save you money on taxis, but you get to see more of daily life this way.

• Trains not planes. Use the well-developed and relatively cheap train system to get from city to city. A ticket is good for the entire day in case you miss your train (not like we would know that). Don't worry about reserving a seat, you'll find one. You get to see the countryside or take a nap as you travel. Warning: Be ready for your stop. You have approximately 4.3 seconds to get off the train before they start moving again.

Lodging:

• Pay cash. Most hotels give you a 10% discount. Plus, no transaction fees.

• Don't limit yourself to hotels. We stayed at a foresteria (guest house) in Venice, which was cute, convenient and half the cost of a hotel. Even if you want to stay in hotels, mix in a hostel for a night or two to save some money. You might need to investigate a little, but every hostel we've stayed at in Europe has been clean and run by friendly people. Many of the ones in Italy are in historic buildings (we stayed in an old convent).
  

• Show your guidebook. With Rick Steves, at least, we were able to get an extra 5 or 10% discount by showing our book when we checked in.

• Get a family room. If you are traveling with four people, you can save a lot of money per person by sharing a room.

• Book directly from their site. We paid less by booking directly through the hotel instead of going through a booking agent. (Although you might get a discount from them, so always compare). Yes, this means you might have to sift through some Italian and poorly-translated English.

• Sleep in the airport. We had a 6am flight out of Venice, so instead of paying $200 Euro for a room, we stayed the night in the airport. This would have been more comfortable if we made it through security, since the lobby had horrible seats. Check out this site first to see if saving the money is worth it to you. I stayed a night at Charles de Gaulle (outside security) and am not surprised to see it listed as the worst airport to overnight in.

Miscellaneous:

• Get a killer-deal on airfare. Check fares regularly when you know you want to go. We were able to snag four tickets at $600/each into Venice.

• Breakfast at the hotel. Most hotels come with breakfast. Fill up and save yourself the cost of another meal.

• Limit trips to the ATM. Save yourself the transaction fees. Be aware that some ATMs limit you to 300 Euro at a time, so you may need to find a money exchange.

• Use the bathroom at restaurant/hotel. You'll save a few Euro, since most public toilets cost money in the cities. And you'll probably save yourself from getting a disease, as many of them are not very clean.

• Do self-guided tours. Bring your guide book or podcast and take advantage of free or cheap audioguides. You'll be able to go at your own pace. And you can always eavesdrop if a tour happens to catch up with you.

• Eat take-out & at delis. Restaurants in Italy don't expect large tips but do charge a service fee. If you're just looking for a salad or sandwich, small delis offer fresh ones for about half the cost of a cafe.

• Go during the off-season. Schedule your trip right before or right after the official tourist season starts (usually May-September). You can find this information in most guide books.

Things we didn't do, but wish we had:

• Double-check prices at restaurants. We ate at one restaurant and one gelato stand where we overpaid. A lot. When the menus aren't clear, its OK to say, “How much for that?” Also, unless you have a good recommendation, I would stay away from fish or other food that is sold by the kg. You may ask for 200g, but will pay for whatever they bring you.

• Get a Capitol One card. They only charge you a 1% fee instead of the standard 3%.

Don't Worry

Worry Beads, originally uploaded by Flagstaff Mouse.

We'll post the money-saving tips for Italy later tonight. We took a slight detour on the way home from 4th of July and snagged a couple of $320 vouchers. Speaking of saving money...

Italy Planning: Guidebooks

History Lesson, originally uploaded by Flagstaff Mouse.

For our trips to Europe, we've found the Rick Steves guides to be the best. We especially like the walks, since we care more about seeing the area than eating and shopping. While we generally prefer an open itinerary, for Italy at the beginning of the high season, during Easter and with four people – we had to plan. Despite a wealth of information on the Internet, the books ended up being our primary planning tool for two reasons. First, most of the English-translated sites we found were somehow trying to trick you into paying extra booking fees for anything you found through them. Second, Rick lists an approximate time for each sight.

Since we were traveling with Marmot's parents, we took books for each city (Venice, Rome, Florence) plus the overall Italy guide. Bulky, but this way we could split up and still know where we were going. At the many art museums we visited , the English translations are dry, minimal or non-existent. Rick's books tell you what you are seeing and, more importantly, why you care. We took an iPod with the audio tours which was nice for waiting in line, but a little slow for our walking pace. I listened to the audioguides on the airplane, so I had a pretty good idea of what I was seeing when we arrived. I'd recommend that approach.

Coming up:
Tomorrow we'll talk about some things we did to save money and Wednesday I'll post our itinerary with links to the websites where we made reservations.