Celebrity playground

My piece on Capri, from the Insight Vacations media trip, was published in the Sunday Star Times  newspaper last Sunday (click here to read the online version).

  

When in Rome

My story about the Colosseum, visited on the Insight Vacations' Best of Italy media trip, is published in this week's NZ Woman's Weekly (click here to read).

10 Days in Italy

The first of my stories from the recent Insight Vacations famil to Italy was published in yesterday's Sunday Star Times. Here's a link to the online version.

Random

While sorting though my notes and thousand-odd photos from last month's media trip to Italy (in preparation for the many stories that have to be written), I came across this photo which was taken at the top of Mount Solaro on the Island of Capri (after we'd braved the dodgy chair lift to get there - health and safety, it seems, isn't quite the thing in Italy it is here!)

Anyway, this is Sam who was my tour director on the Trafalgar Tastes and Sounds of the US South media trip I did last October. He now works for Insight Vacations' LA office and he came up to me the first night in Rome and said, "Do you remember me?" Hilarious...I always knew I'd run into the Alabama-born chap with the gentle southern accent somewhere in the world.

As with last time, Sam was an absolute pleasure to travel with (note his questionable moustache was for Movember).

Pompeii - and the end

The last day of our Insight Vacations media famil was spent driving from Sorrento to Pompeii and then onto Rome for our last night.

Tomorrow night, I fly from Rome to Dubai, spend five hours in the lovely Emirates lounge, and then do the 16 and a bit hour schlep to Auckland (it's an hour or so less going that way). And then two hours and another short hop to Welly.

Before that there will be a last few hours spent in the glorious city of Rome, soaking up the late autumn sun and attempting to off-load the last few Euro.

See you on the other side...

Capri and Positano

No time for words today but instead  images of two of  the most beautiful places on the planet - the island of Capri and, further along the coast, the town of Positano which tumbles dramatically down the steep hills.

Tomorrow we drive to Pompeii and then onto Rone where the Insight Vacations media famil ends. I will be so, so sad to leave Italy - but happy to get home to my two boys.

Venezia

It's my third visit to this magical UNESCO World Heritage site, and yesterday I fell in love all over again.

It is simply stunning, especially outside of summer when more than 60,000 tourists pass through its digestive system, many of them disgorged from hideous ocean liners and touting the most annoying invention of modern times, the selfie stick.

Instead, when autumn ticks over into winter and a moody fog hangs overhead,, like a cold compress, is when this floating city comes into its own.

We were so, so lucky to be staying at the appropriately named Hotel Splendid, smack bang on one of the watery arteries, and to arrive, James Bond style, on a speed boat..

There was a so-cheesy-it's-cool gondola ride, a tour of St Mark's Basilica, a visit to a Murano glass factory and lots and lots of wandering around the tiny cobbled alleyways where getting lost is standard practice. This city is, in fact, made for getting horribly, terribly lost - and discovering all sorts of gems as you attempt to find your way.