The Literary Salon – Travel Books

March 27, 201917 Comments

If you’re not fortunate enough to get away for a vacation this year, what better activity than to curl up with a travel book and listen to the March winds howl, (like a lion the same way they came in). Last year I wandered into the travel section at bookoutlet.com and never left. There are so many wonderful travel books available, it’s difficult to narrow it down to just a few, but here are some of my personal favorites. (Warning: travel memoirs can be equal parts enjoyable and annoying. There can be a fine line between reading about someone’s wonderful experiences in a sunnier place, especially when you are still in the dull dreary dregs of winter, and resenting the hell out them. But remember there can be comfort in staying home too…see The Golden Age of Travel post).

The Pioneer

Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim, was published in 1923, and could be called the first travel memoir of it’s kind. Set in Italy, I profiled it in a blog last year – see link. How could a book with a captivating opening sentence like this, not be good.

“To those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine. Small medieval Italian castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let furnished for the month of April. Necessary servants remain. Z, Box 1000, The Times.”

The King and Queen

A Year in Provence (1989) by Peter Mayle was the first travel memoir I read, and I found it LOL funny. He went on to write a whole series of memoirs (read) and a few novels (not read), about Provence. He made Provence so famous that at one time he moved to Long Island to get away from all the publicity. He died last year, shortly after his last Provence book was published, My Twenty-Five Years in Provence – Reflections on Then and Now, (read) which is a summary of his life there.

If Peter Mayle is the King, then Frances Mayes, of Under the Tuscan Sun fame, is the Queen, and she made Tuscany a very popular place to visit. It’s been 25 years since her bestselling book, and she has written wrote four or five more travel books, (read) and has a new one coming out this year – See You in the Piazza – New Places to Discover in Italy. (on order) She also wrote a novel, Women in Sunlight, last year, which I found so unreadable that I can not recommend it. I’m still not sure how a novel about four women who travel to Italy can miss, but it did. Travel memoirs are definitely her forte.

My Personal Favorite

Susan Branch is my personal favorite of all the travel writers. For those who think of her as just The Heart of the Home cookbook author, did you know that after she lost her publishing contract with Little and Brown in 2009, she started self-publishing and now has a trilogy of marvelous illustrated journals, with a fourth on the way next year about England, Ireland and Wales. Her first, Martha’s Vineyard, Isle of Dreams, is about her move from CA to Martha’s Vineyard in the 80’s after a divorce, which I enjoyed as that is a part of the world I would love to visit. (Her second is about growing up in the 60’s and 70’s and is not really a travel book, but more a memoir of her youth).

A Fine Romance: Falling in Love with the English Countryside by Susan Branch

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Her third, A Fine Romance, is about her trip to England and is full of photos and watercolor illustrations, of such sites as Beatrix Potter’s farm in the Lake District and the Jane Austen House in Chawton.

I find her monthly newsletters inspiring, and you can check out her books and order them from her website. I wish she would venture into France and Italy.

A Paris Year – Janice MacLeod

All About Paris

One of my favorite books about Paris, is Janice McLeod’s, A Paris Year, which I profiled last year in a blog titled, April in Paris – Part Two. A watercolor artist, her journal is illustrated with her own artwork, and is a quirky and whimsical look at her day to day life in Paris.

A Paris Year – Janice MacLeod

Italy Revisited

Marlena de Blasi has written three memoirs about Italy – A Thousand Days in Venice, A Thousand Days in Tuscany and The Lady in the Palazzo – At Home in Umbria , which was my favorite of the three. Her books are well-written and often poetic, but sometimes irritating with respect to her ex-pat mentality and whining about their failure to fit into a foreign culture. So if you want to read about someone who makes an impulsive decision to buy a run down palazzo and then complains about how long it takes to renovate it, then this book is for you. So much of appreciating a travel memoir is based on finding the essayist appealing, still it’s an interesting if illogical journey.

My Current Read

Elizabeth Bard wrote Lunch in Paris – A Love Story with Recipes, about her move to Paris and subsequent marriage to a Parisian, which was good, even if I wasn’t much interested in the cooking part, (there are recipes at the end of each chapter). But I am really liking her second book, Picnic in Provence – a Memoir with Recipes, about their move to a small village in Provence, with their young son. The writing is honest and real and so well done, that it’s easy to overlook the fact that she has a wee bit of a privileged princess attitude.

My Latest Discovery

My latest discovery is Vivian Swift, another watercolor artist, found while browsing the bookoutlet website. (I feel like I’m regressing to my childhood with all these picture books!) Le Road Trip – A Traveler’s Journal of Love and France – is a self-illustrated memoir of her fun and whimsical jaunt through France on her honeymoon.

Her latest book (2015) entitled, When Wanderers Cease to Roam – A Traveler’s Journal of Staying Put details the pleasures of finding a place to call home (Long Island Sound) after 23 years of wandering – because sometimes there’s nothing nicer than staying home and reading about travel!

As you can see, my tastes run to England, France and Italy. But there’s a whole wide world out there. What is your favorite travel book?

A Visit to An Irish Graveyard

March 14, 2019March 6, 202047 Comments

When I traveled to Ireland in the early 80’s, in the days of cheap Euro-rail passes, I went by myself, which looking back was a brave thing to do and certainly out of character for me, a reserved introvert (and I might add the one and only time I traveled by myself). None of my family or friends were interested in Ireland, but it was one of two places I wanted to see when I graduated, the other being New York city. Ireland was not then the popular tourist destination it is today. I remember it as a dismal country, full of small dreary towns, but I had Irish ancestors and even at a young age I was the family historian. It was the stories that interested me. In addition to researching the family history, I had booked a week at an English-riding academy, as a promise to my younger horse-crazy self. This was in the days when Glamour magazine (my fashion bible) had the travel section, which profiled said establishment and promised a glorious week in the Irish countryside (I remember the exact wording) with lovely walks by the sea. I must have envisioned riding to the hounds or galloping along the cliffs like Poldark, something which appealed to the poetic me. After spending a few days at the Dublin Library going through old microfilms of land records (computers and the internet had not then been invented), I located a section of Leitrim County where there seemed to be a large concentration of Patricks and Marys and Johns with my last name, spelled with an a and not the more common o. My dad said it was always with an a, but you have to be careful with genealogy records as variations in spelling can sometimes be the recorder’s honest mistake.

My great great grandparents Patrick and Mary had immigrated to Canada in 1846 at the start of the potato famine and their 14 year old son John came a year later through New York. For more on their story check out last years St. Patrick’s Day blog – Irish Roots.

Patrick and Mary – (tintype)

Their son John below, sitting in the chair, aged 80 yr in 1912.

John and Ellen Family Portrait – 1912

Patrick was proud of his Leitrim County heritage and had it inscribed on his tombstone when he died in 1880, where it is barely legible today.

After sight-seeing in Dublin, I took the train around Ireland, staying in B&B’s and doing some side tours, the usual ones, The Lakes of Killarney,

The Lakes of Killarney

the Ring of Kerry, the Dingle Peninsula (the only sunny day), and the Cliffs of Moher. Readers of my long-winded posts might find it hard to believe but I bailed out of kissing the Blarney stone.

The medical me was horrified at the unhygienic aspect, especially considering my general lack of immunity to foreign germs, plus the thought of reclining backwards over the parapets at that height was not exactly appealing. (see picture under Wikipedia link)

It was September and the weather was gloomy – it rained every day. If it wasn’t raining, it was overcast. (I forgot to put film in the camera, thus missing a whole role of dull gray skies). Central heating was mostly non-existent. I was cold all the time, and wore both of the Irish sweaters I had bought in Dublin the first week.

It poured on the Cliffs of Moher and I got thoroughly soaked, then the bus broke down and we sat for hours waiting for a mechanic to arrive. It was a scary drive back to Cork in the dark with no headlights. Fortunately, my very kind B&B owner met me at the station, as she wondered why I hadn’t returned at 6 pm as planned. She turned on the bedwarmer/electric blanket and after I had a hot bath, brought me tea and cookies, while I sat in bed writing in my journal about my dreadful day. I guess you could say Ireland is where I first started to write, as I kept a travel journal and wrote in it at night if there was nothing else to do. Although it was easy to meet people in the B&B’s, I wasn’t much of a party person and there are only so many pub/Celtic music nights you can handle over a three week period. Reading back over my journal entries, they’re not half bad.

The glorious week at the equestrian centre turned out to be one lesson in a drafty old riding ring, listening to a rude female instructor yell at a group of tweens, horses and myself, in that order. I wasn’t sitting up straight enough, and even though I have a small degree of scoliosis, she showed no mercy. Towards the end of the lesson, when the horse sat down on me, I got off and walked back to the B&B just down the road. So much for that expensive pair of riding boots I had bought in Dublin. The next morning I woke up with a terrible cold, but luckily I had a nice B&B to convalesce in. The proprietress kept insisting there were some lovely walks to the sea (perhaps it was she who had supplied the Glamour advertisement), but I barely left the room, sleeping and reading, and being entertained by their talkative twelve-year old daughter (a carbon copy of Anne of Green Gables complete with red pigtails), who kept me amused with her drawings and music collection. I would surface for supper with the only other guest, an older lady from Dublin in search of a holiday and some company. She talked non-stop. I listened, nodded, and after a spell by the turf fire, went back to bed.

When I was sufficiently recovered, I took the train to Carrick-on-Shannon. Leitrim County (see Wikepedia) is located in central Ireland near the northern border. It’s definitely off the beaten tourist path, but I wasn’t brave enough to rent a car as there were white crosses on the roads marking the spots where tourists had died from forgetting to drive on the left side of the road. I found the local parish and the priest said there was a church in Fenagh and they might have records. He said he didn’t have any records, that I’d come at the wrong time of year and that the area was ‘polluted’ with people with my surname. I didn’t have time to reply that it was spelled with an a, before he slammed the door in my face. (Sigh….they must get tired of tourists).

While I had been blessed so far with nice B&B’s, the one I booked into must have been the worst in all of Ireland. It was undergoing renovations, there was doggy do-do on the stairs, no hot water or heat, and the not very kind landlady told me I had to have breakfast by 8 or I wouldn’t be getting any at all. She did however make arrangements for a driver to take me out to the parish church. There was only one Catholic church in the outlying area and only one cab driver in the town. The next morning when the driver (your typical small Irishman), showed up he was dressed in a tweed suit and tie and not a day under 85. He looked frail, but the B&B lady had assured me he was in good health, just a bit senile, and unlike most Irish people not much for conversation. The only word I remember him saying was ‘aye’.

It was a very foggy morning as we drove out into the countryside and all I could see were hawthorn trees and piles and piles of rocks, swirled in an eerie mist. It was the most desolate place I’d ever seen, and I kept thinking no wonder they left. The west parts of Ireland around Connemara by the sea are rocky but picturesque – but this was just plain bleak. When we got to the church, it looked like a new modern church, right there in the middle of nowhere.

An old priest answered the door. His eyes were red and rheumy and he looked hungover, but he opened the church so I could take some pictures. He told me the church had been built in 1840, (so perhaps my ancestors had worshiped there), but the records only went back to 1855 because of ‘the fire’. There were a few Patricks and one John listed in his old book but the dates weren’t right. The church had been renovated in 1970 and there were about 700 people in the parish. We certainly hadn’t passed any houses so the parish must have taken up a large area of the countryside. (We hadn’t passed any cars either, so perhaps I could have driven on the right side of the road).

When I went back to the car the driver had fallen asleep, so I woke him up and we drove down to the church cemetery which was about a mile down the road, just outside a small village which consisted of a pub, a store, a few houses and a school. The church graveyard was at the site of an old monastery (Fenagh Abbey) which originated around 500 AD and held the ruins of two churches which dated from the 15th century.

There were some newer tombstones, most with the o spelling, a few Patricks and Johns, and lots of crumbled old stones which were impossible to read. I wandered around for awhile taking pictures – it was a strange experience being in the place where your ancestors might have stood and could be buried. The atmosphere was certainly mystical.

Patrick and Mary’s parents, being too old to travel, had stayed behind, and I assume John must have stayed with them when all the others left. Maybe they died in the famine and so he had no choice but to leave a year or two later. They probably wouldn’t have had a proper burial place as in 1847, the worse year of the famine, corpses littered the roads and fields and there was no one left to bury them, nor any coffins to be had. Tombstones were only for the rich.

I recently read a book by John Kelly, The Graves are Walking, which details the horror of that era of Ireland’s history.

The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John KellyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars A scholarly well researched history of the Irish Potato Famine, this book is an important but disturbing read, especially for those of Irish descent.

Having read it, I’m having difficulty with the decision of John being left behind, but then they left in Sept 1846 when the potato crop had failed but before the worst of the famine hit, and if it was John’s decision to stay behind and go to school, then perhaps 14 then wasn’t the child it seems today. Someone must have paid for his passage and put him on a ship to New York, the poor survival rate on the coffin ships to Canada being well known by then. (NB: there is also a Famine Museum in Roscommon Ireland, a tribute to the national disaster).

When I went back to the car the driver had dozed off again and I didn’t have the heart to wake him up so I wandered around some more, snapping pictures. Finally I had to rouse him as I had to catch the train to Dublin. The fog had burned off by then, so I could see more of the countryside on the way back, poor rocky land, the odd house, a few cows and sheep here and there. It was September which would have been harvest season if they had been able to grow anything, even potatoes. We passed a small lake, perhaps they fished?

The Irish tourism site says that Leitrim County, at 32,000, is one of the most sparsely populated counties in Ireland. It was certainly a godforsaken place. At the time of the famine it had a large population of over 150,000, many of whom emigrated. When we arrived back at the B&B I gave the driver 15 pounds instead of the 10 he requested. I was just glad he got me back in one piece – that we hadn’t driven into a bog someplace where I might have been preserved for centuries like the famous bog man in the Dublin museum.

Certainly, it was a surreal experience to visit the land of your long lost ancestors. Now that we have Ancestry.com and numerous online resources, and personal genealogists who will do all the searching for you, I might go back some day, with a more specific plan in mind. For it has certainly occurred to me, that possibly I wasn’t even in the right place. A few years ago, a distant relative in California contacted me. He had tried to do further research and came up empty-handed. There are so few records, that I may have to remain content with my “lost in the mists of time” experience.

A friend brought me back some souvenirs from her Irish trip last year, a Leitrim County flag and a miniature bottle of whiskey, which my leprechaun is enjoying here.

In the thirty five years since I was there, Ireland has prospered, every small town now a picture of tidy charm. Her photographs were gorgeous, but then cameras have improved too. Sensibly, she went in May and had two weeks of solid sunshine and balmy weather. The clerk in the tourist shop inquired why would you want a souvenir from that place – nobody lives in Leitrim County. Well my ancestors once did. I placed the flag on Patrick and Mary’s tombstone in our church cemetery, as I thought they might enjoy the fact that a great great granddaughter was thinking of them and their old homeplace. I hope their Irish eyes were smiling down on me.

A few weeks later, the flag was gone, blown away by the wind, or removed by the priest or grass-cutter, someone with no respect for the past.

Link to Irish Roots post.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Postscript: When I got back to Dublin, I booked a hotel on Grafton Street which had central heating, plenty of hot water and lots of shopping nearby, then switched to a B&B the night before my flight. My suitcase was so full of souvenirs that I had to leave the riding boots behind in the B&B. I simply could not cram them in, so I left them there beside the bed. I hope someone else found them useful – but I have regretted that decision to this day, as there are many times when I’m mucking around in the garden in the spring when they would have come in handy!

Irish Cottage

The Golden Age of Travel

February 28, 2019February 19, 202026 Comments

This is the time of year I used to be winging my way south to escape winter for a week. Travel-wise people routinely book flights months in advance to get the best prices for the prime travel season over the February/March break, but years ago travel was still an unknown venture for the vast majority of people. Only 15% of North Americans had even been on a plane in the 1970’s. It took the hippie generation of young baby boomers, staying in hostels and Euro-railing their way across Europe on $10 a day, to jump start the travel industry so that flying became a commonplace experience. In the Pan-Am years of the 50’s and 60’s with the first charter trips to the Caribbean and Mexico (Acapulco anyone), travel was only for the fortunate few and the very rich. The jet-setting life of airline stewardesses was advertised in books like Coffee, Tea or Me……a line that would surely be considered sexist now. My SIL was an airline stewardess in the mid-80’s and said it wasn’t really all that glamorous….more like being a hard-working waitress in the air and trying to sleep in stuffy hotel rooms.

When I took my first trip in 1975, March break to Florida with four high school friends, we went on a bus. While a two day drive, the bus at $380, was considerably cheaper than flying, and that included the hotel room. I still have the set of baby-blue Samsonite luggage my parents bought me, not just for the trip but also for going away to university (currently in the basement as I never throw anything even remotely vintage out). Today the majority of people hop on a plane at least once a year and think nothing of it. It’s hard to remember when flying was a new and exciting experience, whether someplace tropical or abroad. (The whole concept of Abroad used to be considered exotic, bringing to mind an era of elegance, with ocean liners like the Queen Elizabeth and sleeping cars on the Orient Express). Now flying is just routine, often fraught with headaches, and certainly not part of the fun of going away. Unmanned check-ins and luggage kiosks, long pre-boarding wait times, luggage fees, cramped seats, no meals or drinks and a general lack of amenities have taken the fun from the friendly skies. And consider yourself lucky if no one is ejected from your flight for rude comments or behavior, as many online videos can attest. A friend of mine was so traumatized by a bad airline experience that when her husband found a great price on a mid-winter trip she turned it down because she didn’t want to have to deal with the airport. (I am imagining a future where we might be instantaneously whisked away to our destination in our own magic bubbles like the Jetsons).

I was 24yrs old when I took my first plane trip, a two-week vacation to Hawaii, a popular destination in the 80’s but expensive even back then. I flew on on a Wardair Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet, a 9½ hour flight straight from Toronto to Oahu – an experience I will remember forever. Wardair was a Canadian airline company started by Max Ward in 1946 as a bush pilot operation carrying cargo from the Yukon and Northwest Territories to Edmonton, which eventually expanded into a luxury domestic and international travel fleet of aircraft. Mr. Ward believed that PART OF THE FUN OF TRAVEL SHOULD BE GETTING THERE. Wardair’s motto was luxury “Steak and Champagne” flights at reasonable prices. Here’s a Wikipedia link for more on the Wardair history.

During our long non-stop flight all 500 plus seats were treated to first class service. My sister had warned me about the initial rush of takeoff, (which I found a bit scary), but the jet was so big once we were up on the air it felt like nothing at all. The stewardesses (all female in those days) had passed out trays of candies in preparation for any ear popping. About an hour into the flight we were treated to a champagne breakfast on real china, then they passed out hot towels. The seats were spacious. All drinks were free. An in-flight movie followed, nothing I remember. One of the stewardesses, a classmate of mine from high school, sat down with me on her break and regaled me with stories of her four day lay overs in Hawaii. What impressed me most was the spiral staircase to the upper deck where there was a bar where you could mix and mingle, or just stretch your legs. Imagine a bar in the sky – very James Bond.

Later we were served a wonderful filet mignon dinner on the special Wardair Royal Doulton china with snowy white draped tablecloths and napkins, your choice of wine, then coffee and a fancy dessert. We read and rested, then more hot towels to wipe your face and hands before we arrived – at 3pm with the time change. I remember descending into balmy weather where we were greeted with the traditional lei necklace welcoming us to Hawaii. Yes, this flying was a wonderful thing – I was spoiled for life.

Fast forward a few years, and after a few cramped experiences with Air Canada (famous for frozen green peas and rubber chicken), and other airlines, I was less than impressed . Flash forward to the 80’s and another set of luggage (wheels had been invented), with a vintage-style carry so chic it once got me upgraded to First Class and salmon.

As a carry on it was pretty useless, but so Audrey Hepburnish, with all those little spaces for cosmetics and toiletries. In regular class you still got fed, (I remember a particularly stale sandwich on a flight out west), but all the frills were gone. A few more years, and Wardair was gone too…..bankrupt. Mr. Ward had expanded too quickly and people were now being swayed by discount airlines, cheap flights and frequent flyer miles.

I haven’t been on a plane in years, for a variety of reasons – work, family, medical. If there is one airborne germ circulating on the plane it will have no difficulty finding my seat. My last trip was spent in a Mexican five star all inclusive resort with a sore throat and sinus cold so miserable I barely left the room, except to gaze upon the bougainvillea on the balcony. The food was tasteless, and deficient in chicken noodle soup. (At least in Hawaii the dreaded sore throat did not arrive until the second last day although it took three days for my ears to unplug from the flight home). I do hope to travel again someday, but not in a run down but let’s cram everything into one week and arrive home sick and exhausted kind of way, but at a more leisurely pace. When you are young, cheap and basic will do, when you are older, you require a bit more luxury and space. High rise hotel rooms where you can’t open a window make me feel claustrophobic, so perhaps an Airbnb or renting a villa for a month would be more appealing. In the meantime, while everyone is talking about their trips down south, I am thinking of this quote from a delightful book by Vivian Swift, who finally put down roots in a small Long Island town after twenty years of roaming the world – When Wanderers Cease to Roam – A Traveler’s Journal of Staying Put.

Quote: ‘Travel is not what it used to be. And that’s a good reason to Stay Put.’

In the meantime I am living vicariously through travel books – let someone else deal with the crowded airports and the lost luggage.

(See the upcoming Literary Salon – Travel Books– in March).

What was your worst airplane/travel experience?

Enchanted April

April 24, 2018April 24, 201922 Comments

Despite being written almost a hundred years ago the book, The Enchanted April, is just as enchanting today. Four very different women, all unknown to each other in dreary post WW1 Britain, answer an ad for an Italian villa. Two are married but taken for granted by their husbands, one is single and beautiful but tired of grabby men, and one is a widow facing a sad lonely old age. They have nothing in common other than they are starved for beauty and love, and for the fresh air and sunshine of the Italian coast.

Italian Villa – 2015

I watched the movie first, before I read the book, which is what I would recommend. The movie is from 1992 and while film quality has improved tremendously since then, it is still a lovely period drama, (and if I’m ever reincarnated I want to come back with straight black bobbed hair).

My Good-reads review:

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I absolutely loved this book, but I had watched the movie first. A timeless tale with a lovely story line and such vivid descriptions of flowers, gardens and beautiful countryside that you almost felt like you were there.
I ordered the book because it is one of those timeless classics you simply have to own. It was a bestseller in it’s day, 1923, and was based on a month long trip the author, Elizabeth von Arnim, made with her husband to the village of Portofino, Italy, which soon became a famous tourist destination because of the success of the book. They stayed at the Castello Brown, (now a museum), which is where the movie was filmed seventy years later.

It’s such a charming story, that it might inspire you to grab three of your girlfriends and go off on your own Italian adventure. Who wouldn’t want to live la dolce vita?

Tuscan Villa – 2015

Of course in the book the villa came complete with all the necessary servants, so hiring a chef to do the cooking would be the sensible thing to do. (You could invite Amal for tea, she’s British and may be in need of a cuppa and a break from the bambinos). Isn’t that part of the attraction of period pieces, there was always someone to prepare the meals, wash the dishes, care for the children…..and look after the garden.

It’s not surprising that there were such lovely descriptions of the flowers and grounds in the book, as the author’s first bestseller was Elizabeth and Her German Garden in 1898. I have not read that one yet, as I plan on reading it outside on the deck whenever it gets warm enough, as inspiration for gardening season. But I did read her book, The Solitary Summer, last summer which I enjoyed also, which concerned her need for solitude and beauty in the countryside with her April, May and June babies. Her first best seller was published anonymously, and the subsequent ones as by the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Because these books are old and often out of print they are best ordered online.

Perhaps there is something about being in such a lovely setting that inspires love. In the book their husbands became more appreciative, although no one runs off and has an affair, (it was a more decorous time), well only the single one. I remember reading once in a book on Italy about a medical condition called, Stendhal’s Syndrome, which is an emotional reaction to too much loveliness. A handful of tourists are treated for this every year in Florence, having been overwhelmed by an excess of beauty. Finally a medical condition we can all aspire too! Of course we don’t have to go to Italy to experience beauty in our lives – it is all around us, we just have to pay attention. Is it possible to surround yourself with an excess of loveliness, especially in a world which so often seems full of evil, hate, and ugliness? Perhaps not, but it is an admirable goal to choose to focus on what is lovely in the world, and so much better for your health! Buona giornata!

Quote of the Day: “It is their manners as a whole, their natural ways, bonhomie, the great art of being happy which is here practiced with this added charm, that the good people do not know that it is an art, the most difficult of all.” (Stendhal on Italy)

Song of the Day: April Love by Pat Boone