We spent two weeks in Italy and somehow hit Rome, Siena, Florence, Pisa, San Gimignano, Venice, Milan, Sorrento, Pompeii, Naples, Positano, and Amalfi… which sounds glamorous until you realize we were basically training for a stair-based survival show. Rome is chaos…

Buongiorno! We only ended up sacrificing a few small, replaceable toiletry items—but we also kind of cheated. On the way here, we brought carry-ons to avoid lost luggage. Today, we checked them instead. We each also had an extra shoulder bag in addition to our…

Is it weird that I’m not even a little sore from all the stairs yesterday? Italy, in general, has reactivated all of my muscle groups. I should really take advantage of this and make friends with a StairMaster when I get back. Last night I had to finish my blogging…

Dear Diary,Today I climbed 7,000 steps. Let me tell you more… I’ll admit, this was our least planned day of the entire trip. The only thing on my itinerary was: Positano and Amalfi. In an attempt to still be somewhat proactive, I went on the Ferryhopper app the night…

This morning we took the 8:14 a.m. Circumvesuviana commuter train to Pompeii. This part of Italy is a little different from the rest of the country. I don’t want to call it the Stone Age, but… you can’t tap to pay or buy tickets online. There are ticket machines, I…

So the floating dust bunnies turned out to be poplar fluff, which is basically tree seed fluff, and it spreads far and wide. I find it to be a nuisance, but the Milanese act like they don’t even see it anymore. Either that, or they’ve been desensitized and evolved to…