While organizing all the different gadgets we would be bringing to Italy, I felt I had to look for some way to lesson the number of cables and power blocks that I'd need to bring. In our home we have pretty much one whole shelf in our kitchen with a multi-outlet surge protector with all sorts of things plugged into it--and we often still run out of space for those darned power blocks.
Then I discovered this beauty: This is the LEPOWER 40W, 5 Port Desktop USB Charger. This thing replaces all those power blocks... most of them nowadays come with USB cables for each device that plug right into the block. Well, instead of taking all those blocks, take just this one. The beauty of this thing is not only the 5 USB slots, but that two of them (on the right) are super chargers (higher power). When I plug my Kindle into one of them it charges in less than 15 minutes. We've tried our Motorola Droid phones (3 different models), Ipads, cameras, you name it. They all get charged with this one charger. Plug the larger devices into the two right slots, the rest (like smart phones) into the other three. Also, the thing has some sort of circuitry that speaks to each device and gives it the correct amount of power needed for charging. So far, it works with every type of device and I haven't fried a single one. For Italy, all I have to do is plug in one of those European adapters into its power cord and we're good to go (it works with 120 or 220 volts). So, even though we might still have to bring a mess of cables (some cables are dedicated to one specific device) not having to bring all those power blocks fantastic. --Jerry Finzi
UPDATE 11/30/14: This was one of the most invaluable tech gadgets we brought along with us. It charged every device we had (aside from an older camera) and in most cases, charged them faster than normal. A very valuable tool for travel!
UPDATE 5/22/17: The LEPOWER unit is no longer available (but is still working well in our home), so we recommend this USB Charger...
Here's the thing. I love pizza. Always have, always will. I loved it since I was a kid and my Mom would make it in our little kitchen. She'd give me a little ball of dough to make a tiny one just for myself. The smell would waft out into the halls in our little apartment building, and my cousins--who lived upstairs--would know it's time to invade. I also hung out at the local pizzeria when I was a teen. I worked in the back helping to make dough and sauce, folded delivery boxes and delivered for tips... and got a lot of free slices. Dripping hot, cheesy, burn your tongue hot slices on a cold winter's Friday night--that's the best. But it wasn't until about 8 years ago that I became determined to make my own pizza at home. A baking stone, a good cutter, bread flour and a professional oven peel and almost a year of practice and lots of so-so pizzas. I even remember one time when I forgot to put the stone in the oven and shoved the pizza off my wooden peel right onto the oven rack. What a mess! Somehow, I managed to get most of it off the rack and folded it over and made my first ever Stromboli. I now consider myself somewhat of a pizza expert. I can manipulate the dough recipe to make it more crisp, more fluffy, more thick like a focaccia, super thin and more. I can make a Sicilian style, an upside down Chicago deep dish, rustic shaped, pan pizza, heart shaped and dog bone shaped. I've even made double crust stuffed pizzas and my own version of the edge-stuffed crust. Dessert pizzas are killer when we have friends over. And at Thanksgiving time there's my Thanksgiving Pizza made with turkey, stuffing, cranberries and gravy. You can't believe how good that one is. I'm so into the nuances of pizza-making that I even noticed how a rainy day has a great effect on my pizzas... rainy day pizzas are better. Now I'm going to where pizza was invented. I'm going to sample pizza all around Italy. But not the tourist pizzas you get across the street from the tourist hot-spots, but the real pizzas from the little mom & pop pizzerias and bakeries. I'm going to take notes with my mouth, my tongue and my belly. I'll see if there are differences between pizzas in Tuscany, Rome, Puglia, Amalfi or the mountain villages of Basilicata. I'll take pictures when the pizza is blog-worthy. I'll come back with new recipes and perhaps a few new techniques. Maybe I'll get a brick pizza oven someday so I can make those smoky, semi-charred pizzas. Stay tuned... and have a slice on me. --Jerry Finzi Of course, I want this voyage to change Lucas' outlook on life and have a long-term effect on who he becomes as a man. When I went to live (for just under a year) in France in the Seventies, it changed my whole outlook on life, politics, food, and culture. I learned some of a new language. I saturated myself with French folklorique musique and put up with the likes of Johnnie Hallyday "rock n roll". In Italy, I want Lucas to see the miracles of The David and the Sistine Chapel, but I don't want to bore him with waits on extremely long lines and hall after hall of statue after dusty statue. I mean, how much marble can a young boy take (that is, unless they are the colorful, rolling kind)? Of course, I will try to give him what he wants, too. One of his "must-see" things in Italy is the Leaning Tower of Pisa, so we will take him there. In the same region is Vinci with its great Da Vinci Museum--a great fun and education place to take kids. And of course, in Rome the Colosseum with its stories of Gladiators fighting to their bloody death appeals to most kids. But I want him to notice all the small things too... how we are the same but oh-so-different from people living in another culture: Clothes hanging on the balconies to dry, tiny grocery stores selling really fresh and flavorful fruit and strange looking veggies, lemons as big as grapefruits, weird 3-wheeled cars, roads so curvy and twisty that you have to hold your breath around each hairpin, "old" buildings not just 200 years old (as we have here in Pennsylvania) but over 2000 years old, and after dinner a stroll (passagiata) instead of watching an overly long episode of America's Got Talent.... and the language. I want him to listen and speak in Italian. We have already been playing our Pimsleur Italian CDs in the car every time we go someplace. It's become a game to see who can remember the lessons and who has the best pronunciation. And of course, he's going to experience different food--he's already got a pretty broad palate for an 11-year old. I've also loaded my Google Earth pin maps with lots of other interesting and fun options: Italian go-karting (a real sport there), a cool amusement park (for a fun break), a huge cavern (Grotte di Castellana near Bari), thousands of real dinosaur footprints (Puglia), a prehistoric "caveman" (Altamura Man), bread that can last for a month (Pane Altamura), a hot air balloon ride over Tuscany, the "Manhattan Towers" of San Gimignano, a Ghost Town or two, a volcano, a night sleeping in an Oz-like house called a Trullo (near Alberobello), huge radio telescopes, an abandoned missile base, sea grottoes, a boat ride below the cliffs of Amalfi (I'll let him drive the boat), a tremendous, ancient sinkhole (he became a sinkhole expert after last year's science project), and some other surprises that neither Lucas or Lisa know about. Maybe we won't get to all of them, but depending on the mood and the weather, there are lots of things that I hope will keep him from getting bored, and knowing what's in the area we are driving through ahead of time will help me make up some pretty cool days in Italy for Lucas...
And if all this fails, there's gelati... pizza, more gelati... then more pizza... then gelati... --Jerry Finzi We've booked two different car rentals for Italy... one the Tuscany part of our Voyage, and another for the souther leg of our trip from the Amalfi Coast, through Basilicata and then on to Puglia. We reserved a Fiat 500L for each region. So, this week my wife Lisa tells me that the first rental charge showed up on the credit card bill but the second never did. I should call and make sure the reservation is good to go. Ok, so I call... and I'm so glad I did! It turns out that although this reservation still was in their system, they said it was set up for us to pay at the rental broker in Naples when we pick up the car. Huh? I set these up the same time and both with the same charge card. Not only that, but the Hertz rep on the phone (very nice actually) asked if I had the "voucher" numbers for each rental. Vouchers? All I have is the original confirmations when I booked them online. Not good enough. Apparently, they needed to mail (takes 2 weeks or more) or fax (ever hear of email?) the vouchers to us. This should have been done months ago when I first booked the cars. And, get this... they would not have given us the cars without vouchers!
With less than three weeks to go I wasn't about to take a chance with the mail, so fax it was... er... but it's been so long since we received a fax I forgot which of our two phone numbers the fax was on. Uh... Ok, I think it's the second number. I told the rep that number and the second line started ringing.... so I run up two flights to our office and the fax is not being answered. I find the phone line is not attached and that it was really trying to come in on the line I was talking to the rep on. Ok, easy fix. But the phone jack is mislabeled. I quick give the other number and tell them to try that one. Long story short... it was over an hour before I had the two fax vouchers in my hand, BUT BOTH PHONE LINES KEPT RINGING for the next hour or more! Somehow, there were doubled up faxes cued up on their end that kept coming in. So, I had to plug in one line and then sit there receiving fax after fax until that line stopped ringing. Then I hooked up the other phone line and started accepting more faxes. Stress! But at lease I have the right vouchers and will get the cars. Lesson learned: Even if you THINK you've crossed all your T's and dotted all your I's, when booking a car rental in Italy, make sure you get them to send you the actual rental vouchers BEFORE you leave for Italy! Sigh. Italian pizza had sure be better than my own... --Jerry Finzi It's no wonder that some people opt for a cookie cutter, travel agent planned trip--or even (ugh) a cruise with integrated bus tours. It must be easy to sit in a travel agent's storefront and tell them your likes and dislikes and <P U F F>... all of a sudden, your trip is planned for you. Well, I've been planning every little detail of this trip for months. Yes, months. This week it's been getting the details of our technology straight. Skype. Dropbox. Global Calling options added to our cellphones. Making scans of documents to upload to Dropbox (just in case we loose something) or put on our Kindles and phones. Making certain we have all the cables labeled and ready to go. Getting a new charger that uses higher voltage and can quick charge up to 5 devices at once. Reading manuals for a new camera we got for the trip. Whew! And maps. I'm still not quite done but getting there. I've used Google Earth to plan where to go and what to see--creating pin maps organized by folders (by region of our trip). I then saved each folder separately from Earth as a .kmz file which can be be copied to my PC, then onto either a smart phone or tablet. When I'm in a particular area I can load up "North Tuscany.kmz" and it will pop up in Google Earth! I can then plan our day before we leave our WiFi equipped apartment. As for actual driving routes, I've used Google MAPS to get DIRECTIONS for each specific route. Now the tricky part... After you name and save the resulting map in MY PLACES, then click on MY PLACES, click again on the new map name, and you'll see a little link called KML. This will let you save the map as a .KML file which also can load up into Google Earth! Slick. For the days when we are just meandering through the countryside, I got a new Tom Tom GPS unit with the European maps already installed. I was trying to buy the Euro maps for my old Magellan but after a week of trying to download them with constant error messages I discovered from Magellan that no one in the world could get those maps due to server problems on their end. I couldn't even get them to send me a set on a memory stick (which is still an option on their web site for the same price as a direct download.) Anyway, the new Tom Tom is pretty easy to use and has some nice features. Plus, I'm adding addresses and phone numbers for all sorts of contacts in Italy--right into the Tom Tom. Am I finished with all the planning and preparations? Not by a long shot... but I'm getting close. --Jerry Finzi Today's word of the day is... Uschita (Exit) Pronounced: oo-SHEE-ta The first thing I noticed when we landed in Italy was all the signs saying "Uschita". When I learned how to pronounce it, I just thought it sounded really funny! OO SHEET AH! Like, "Get out of my way... I gotta go OOO.... SHEET--AH!" Today's post will come up soon! --Lucas Finzi Today I'm starting the school year. BUM BUM BUM! (No, not really). I like school, but sometimes I'm still happy to get a few days off school. For Italy I'm getting like a few weeks! My grades are excellent so the school said it's OK for me to take this trip. In fact, the school superintendent of the whole district said it's OK!
My dad told me not to get sick in school, because if I do before the trip, the venture to Italy is GONZO! So I have wipes, a small bottle of hand sanitizer, and if I see someone sneezing, I'll duck for cover! Hopefully I won't get sick and this trip is a GO! --Lucas Finzi, Fifth Grade Student P.S. I just thought about it. When I'm in Italy, all the Italian kids will be in school, but I won't! Whoo Hoo! |
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