Book Giveaway: 100 Places In Italy Every Woman Should Go

July 31, 2012

The fabulous Susan Van Allen has updated her 100 Places In Italy Every Woman Should Goadding budget tips, maps, and online resources to a wonderful list of must-see spots.

You can win this book! To have your name tossed into the hat, just drop a comment on this post before midnight on August 3 EST. You can just say hi, or you can tell us what your favorite place is in Italy (or if you’ve never been to Italy, tell us where you wanna go). Or explain why you must have this book. The contest is open to everyone; if your name is picked from the hat, Susan will send the book to you even if you live at the ends of the Earth.

Grazie Susan, and complimenti!!!

 

Cover, 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go, by Susan Van Allen

 

Advice from Susan Van Allen…

Go Solo. Italy is a fantastic place to wander solo, following your very own desires. As Italians are such wonderfully social people, you’ll rarely find yourself feeling lonely….If you are on your own and would like to break up your solo time, log on to Lonely Planet’s Thorntree (www.lonelyplanet.com), CouchSurfing (www.couchsurfing.com) or Connecting Solo Travelers Network (www.cstn.org) to find out who else is around that you could meet up with. Or you could join a group tour that’s focused on an active adventure, sightseeing, or a workshop that focuses on your interests. In other words, “I have no one to go with,” doesn’t have to be an obstacle to your Italian travel dreams.

Flirting. There’s a shrink in New York who prescribes a trip to Italy for women who need a boost to their self-esteem. Italian men have mastered the art of flirting—it’s one of the country’s masterpieces. Females of all ages are adored here. Enjoy, without taking it too seriously. It’s all in the spirit of: You are women, we are men. We are alive! And what a fun game we play! If you get harassment rather than flirting, a loud “Vai Via” (”Go Away”) is the age-old stopper, and it usually works.

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PS. Susan is offering a “Golden Week in Tuscany” for women only from November 3-10. Check it out here.

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Book Giveaway: Sweet Lemons 2

April 8, 2011

The second volume of Sweet Lemons is out, and thanks to Legas, the publisher, I have a copy to give away.

Edited with love by Venera Fazio and Delia De Santis, Sweet Lemons 2: International Writings with a Sicilian Accent is almost 400 pages long and contains stories, poems, and essays by 90 writers–most from the Sicilian diaspora. There are also some Sicilian writers in translation (Vittorino and Camilleri, to name a few) and the odd contributor like me who hasn’t got a goccia of Sicilian blood.

To be eligible to win this book, all you have to do is add a comment to this post or to another recent post (scroll down on my homepage to see which posts are not yet closed to comments) before April 14.  You’ll also need a mailing address in North America.

Sweet Lemons 2: Writings with a Sicilian Accent

In “Lemon Ice Cream” Kenneth Steven remembers his early years living under Mount Etna:

If I close my eyes now, very tightly, I can smell everything. The ice cream that my father is scooping into bowls in green-white curves, the little kitchen with its open dishes of herbs and its baskets of vegetables. The windows are open and all of us–my mother, my brother, my father and me–we are all looking out onto the umber sea of the fields, and the scent that is coming in is from the lemon grove…

In an excerpt from Conversazione in Sicilia translated by Isabella Colalillo Katz, Elio Vittorini remembers riding on a Sicilian train:

The stations went by, one by one, little wooden cabins with the sun shining on the red caps of the station masters; and the forest opened and closed with prickly pears tall as forks, like cerulean stones. And whenever we saw anyone, a boy coming or going along the track picking the fruit crowned in thorns that grew like coral on the prickly pear plants, he would shout as the train went by…

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