Nature is healing (my brain is mush)

Pleased to note here that we've officially hit that point in my summerlong travels when my brain fully becomes deranged! 

Usually this is down to a little bit of travel fatigue: I have very strong homebody and wanderlust instincts, and much like my introvert/extrovert split, I never quite know which one needs to be fed until it flares up. In 2017, by the time August rolled around, I had begun ordering (new) English-tailored pajamas off of eBay to ship to my friends Kate and Stuart (my final stop before my trip back to America) and only after I'd done the same with a pair of travel slippers did I pause and think: what's going on here. The answer, clearly, was that my brain was frantically engaging in retail as a way to The Secret a home into existence: if I owned pajamas and slippers, then surely that autumn in Chicago I'd be padding about in them on a Saturday morning, listening to LPs and drinking coffee. (That this did come true doesn't necessarily mean the one manifested the other. Probably.)

Grab Bag Vol II

After the jump: random memories and conversations from my pre-Bologna travels! (Real-time update is that I'm writing this in Milan as part of a few scheduled posts since I'm heading into a more unplugged path that'll take me up through Switzerland to visit friends in the UK. Today's temperature is 107 degrees! I'm very calm and normal about this!)

There's basically one remaining hand-painted signmaker in Naples, and once you recognize his work you see it everywhere! Also make sure you visit Lello's mozzarella-focused salumeria in Naples! It changed my liiiiiiife!

Agriturismi amore

This trip has been a real avalanche of glorious moments, vistas, and encounters, but I do think that staying at an agriturismo (namely Le Mandrie San Paolo, crazy-highly recommended) has to be in the running for "if you could only save one stretch of the trip in your memory, which would you hang on to forever?" After the jump: what exactly an agriturismo is, and why at least this one made me an immediate convert to their glories!

Not the agriturismo itself, but a park trail that begins on the property, did I mention this agriturismo was located within a national park on a dang mountain seems like a pretty cool combination of things as far as I personally am concerned!!!

Umbria and its Contents

 Moving back in time to a pre-wallet-loss time (situation fully resolved by now, which is: grand!) let's click past the jump and see what Umbria is all about! SPOILERS: it's dreamy and grand??

What happens when you lose your wallet in a foreign country?

Well, it was bound to happen, as much time as I've spent on the road, and as bleary-eyed as I've been at times: my wallet went on a Forever Walk here in Bologna, and this post is a little guide to What Happens Next. After the jump: I just explained what's gonna be after the jump, why am I restating it here?

Portrait of the author upon having seen his wallet go astray

Naples

After the jump: Naples!

Palermo

Hi. Hi hello, hi. Welcome. It's been... a minute.

Lots of stuff afoot as usual (the swirl of trying to get some work done, a series of days in the upper 90s and low 100s, an unexpected film festival and some personal adventures here in Bologna) that has me once more falling behind in updating this account of What Exactly Have I been Up To, to the degree that we gotta go alllll the way back a month to my arrival in: Palermo! Which, not to give anything away, might be my favorite city on this trip, and very possibly my favorite city in Italy. (Don't like it? Write me a grant to revisit your faves and retabulate! I'll be very rigorous!) After the jump: um, why?