When I was younger, one my favorite expressions was "Go Big or Go Home". One day I found myself in Whistler for the weekend with one girlfriend or another and I saw a shirt in one of the shops there that had GO BIG OR GO HOME in huge red letters on it and part of a wheel of a mountain bike. I think I still have it somewhere. I had to have it.

Since then, I haven't said it as much, but I've certainly tried to live up to it as best as I can. Last week I got an email from a friend of mine who just moved to Italy a few months ago. There's some long weekend happening this week, so she said "Why don't you come over and we'll roam around Veneto for a week?" What a damned good idea! I checked out the usual suspects and found fares in the 1200-1300US range. Pretty steep. I was about to give up on it when on a whim I checked out Lufthansa's website. They have a link called "Top Offers" and I put in Miami as my departure point. I was quite pleasantly surprised to see a web-only special for round-trip from Miami to Frankfurt for $375USD. With taxes it was nearly $600, but that was still half the price I saw advertised elsewhere. I booked it almost immediately.

As I was looking around for a way to get down to Italy from Frankfurt, I remembered Ryan Air, the Wal-Mart of airlines. I don't particularly care how opulent or no-frills the flight is because it's such a short flight, and I've flown on some pretty scary planes when Cubana used to fly into Cayman a bunch of years ago. I found a southbound flight into Rome for about 20 euros, and the return leg from Pisa to Frnakfurt was just a penny! Sure it was about 25 euros after taxes and whatnot, but still, a penny!

We're going to meet up in Rome, spend a day there, then go back to Florence and drop off my suitcase and go light and hit the train. Tentatively we're going to scoot across to Venice for a day, then ride the train back to Padova for a day, and then head to Verona for a day. After that, I'm going to head north and visit my relatives I haven't seen for TWENTY YEARS and she's going to head back to Florence because she has to work on Wednesday. Wednesday I'm going to amble my way back to Florence by way of Vicenza and Ferarra and meet up with her for dinner followed by Siena on Thursday. Friday is open, but I think Im going to spend thursday night and friday in Florence before heading to Pisa (with a stop at the Vespa musem in Pontedera on the way) to catch my flight back to Frankfurt. Finally we'll catch a train into Frankfurt and stay there that night and then I get up early Sunday to catch a flight back to Miami and then on to Cayman Sunday night.

I dunno how well that schedule is going to hold up, that's a pretty whirlwind tour. I'll probably need a vacation to catch my breath once I get back but we only go around this crazy merry-go-round once so I might as well make the most of it.

It goes without saying that I'm going to be taking copious amounts of pictures... almost as much as I'm going to eat and drink. Perhaps I should follow Google Maps' directions and SWIM back to Miami and work off some of that excess caloric intake :)