Books

Okay, so I'm back. It has been really hard to think of things to say, and even harder to find the time to say them, but it's time to start writing again.

So, this last week I've been re-reading the Da Vinci Code.

And, not only that, I've really been enjoying it.

However, I'll be reading the last chapter on my bus ride home tonight and I have no idea what to read next.

I guess the obvious next step would be to finish reading all of Dan Brown's books, but there are such a limited number of them I don't want to exhaust that literary well too soon.

Does anyone have any good book suggestions? Something adventurish would be good, with complex plots and conspiracies and secret organizations. Those are the kinds of things that interest me. I'd really rather not read any books about kids in Somalia or somewhere being tortured and killed. Or anything on Oprah's list. And fictional books about Nephites frustrate me (I hate to see writers getting rich off of people's religious fanaticism).

Any suggestions?

Tivoli

One place I'd love to return to is the small town of Tivoli, about an hour's bus ride from Rome. The only time I've been there was on my birthday in 1997. We took the metro to the Tiburtina stop, then caught a bus out to Tivoli, but didn't exactly know where to get off the bus, or where to go once we did, or even what sites we were going there to see. I guess we figured that the sites would be obvious when we arrived.

Instead, we wandered around the main street for awhile until we'd stumbled into the Villa d'Este, an enormous villa with gardens and fountains that seem to go on forever.

It was amazing to see. I'll have to scan in more pictures of the fountains; some shoot hundreds of feet into the air. And, when you consider that they're nearly 500 years old, it's pretty impressive that they still function.

After walking through the gardens we found a little place to eat, then walked around a little more. We eventually came upon an overlook where we could see a beautiful waterfall.

Between the water and the rocks and the green, green vegetation around it, not to mention the rainbows in the spray coming up from the light blue pool at the bottom, it was a sight that even now begs me to come back and see it again.

No collection of pictures of Italy would be complete without pictures of Pompei, and no picture of Pompei would be complete without Vesuvius in the background.

It's amazing to see all the buildings that are still standing, just as they were almost 2000 years ago. It's like the ultimate ghost town.

It isn't hard to imagine what this place looked like in its glory days.

Caserta Vecchia

Welcome to my new blog. I'm getting excited about my trip back to Italy next year and have been going through my old pictures to decide which places are "must-see" on this trip. It's too easy to ruin a vacation by trying to cram in too much.

The above picture is Caserta Vecchia, a little old town up on the hill above Caserta. I only made it out there once, and really enjoyed it. As I remember, it was really hard to get to, and there wasn't much to do once you got there, but it was sure pretty to look at.

I'll try to keep this site updated with pictures and stories, and any other thoughts I have about Italy or Italians in general. Let me know if you have any questions or requests.

Umbria...

This was the last town I lived in on my mission. It's called Spoleto and there's not a whole lot more to it than you see above. The town was built on a little hill right next to a mountain. There's a castle at the top of the hill and the town cascades down the one side, and is completely surrounded by an old wall and a little moat (that doesn't have much water left in it).

In this next picture you can see the "moat"on the left side (the white surrounded by bright yellow) and the wall to the left of it. Everything on the left side of the wall is the original city (I'm not sure how old it is, but pretty old), and everything on the right is pretty modern. We lived straight out about 2 miles or so (much cheaper out there).

Spoleto is situated at the south end of a big valley--at the north end of the valley is Assisi, which you may have heard of (think St. Francis of Assisi, the author of "All Creatures of our God and King"). I'll try to dig up some more pictures of the city--it really is pretty.

The downside of Spoleto, at least for missionaries, is that it's tiny and nobody will let you teach them. So we spent a lot of time throwing rocks off of the bridge: