barnstormers Return

After 5 years, the Barnstorming Summer blog returns.  This  time, it’s the Italian version.  There will be some differences, we won’t be posting every day.  It is a shorter trip.  Last time we were traveling for 5 weeks, this time just a short two and a half week jaunt.  Much will remain the same, we will once again be free styling our trip.  We have a couple of key hotel rooms booked and a rental car reserved but nothing else other than a loose “to do” list in mind.

At the risk of being contradictory, it feels like both yesterday and forever, since we’ve had a free-styling road trip extravaganza.  Our rough outline for this trip includes flying in and out of Milan. Spending two days and nights exploring then heading out and about Northern Italy.  We’ve pre-booked a hotel in Milan because who wants to try and find a room at 6AM local time and 12 midnight body time.  Surely not us, we’re not that crazy.  And, we have an airport hotel for the night prior to our departure just so we know we’ll make the return flight on time.

Our Milan plans include the Duomo but sadly not the Last Supper. Conventional wisdom holds these need to be pre-booked we were successful in obtaining cathedral and roof top tour tickets but not Last Supper tickets.  They sold out the day they went on sale.  Really all this means is that we will need to return to Milan someday.

We arrive in Milan on Friday morning.  On Sunday, we pick up a rental car and begin barnstorming Italy.  Our loose plans include Turin (home of the shroud) and or Genoa.  Then the Cinque Terre for two nights.  Our fingers are crossed that the weather will cooperate as we are hoping to walk between all five towns.  Then we head east across the Emilia-Romagna region. We expect to stop in Parma, Bologna and Modena.  We are looking to tour a parmesan cheese dairy, a balsamic vinegar production facility a prosciutto farm,and an olive oil orchard and a winery.  We fully expect to partake in the bounty these facilities produce.  

In 2017, I met up with Will while he was being “Willfully Free” or “Will, fully free”, I never did get a clear answer to that particular question.  While we were in Italy we stumbled upon Ravenna.  It is an amazing town on the Adriatic cost, just south of Venice.  It boasts 8 world heritage sites all covered in mosaics dating back to the Byzantine era.  It was a highlight of our trip and will definitely be a Barnstorming Italy stop.  

From Ravenna we will head back north and west towards perhaps Padua, Verona and or Treviso.  Then further north to the Italian Lake District.  Rounding out our trip back at MXP for a solid night sleep and an early morning departure.  

So, not many pictures worth posting from JFK waiting to board but stay tuned for the weird, the wild and the wonderful as we circumnavigate Milan.  

Thanks for joining us again this summer.