You Tube Video - Festa dei Serpari (Snakes)

A number of years ago we took a trip to the south of Italy. We visited the regions of Campangna and Puglia. On our way back to Rome we visited a small town in Abruzzo called Cocullo for the annual Snake Festival (Festa dei Serpari)

The whole town comes out with real snakes and they put them on a statue of their patron saint and march around town. Local television is always there and many people dress up in historical costumes. It's one long crazy day.

Here's a You Tube video of the event. The video is from an Italian variety show so you have to wait a minute for the snake festival to start. It's in Italian but you don't need to speak Italian to know what's going on when they get to the snake part.

Enjoy
John

This is the end, beautiful friend...

I didn't want to quote Jim Morrison's "The End" but when I read the title of 23rd thing I couldn't get the song out of my mind. But this is not the end. On the contrary, this exercise made a beginning for me by getting me to start this blog.

It is my hope that now I'm "out there" I can develop this blog and maybe a Wiki or two into a resource for Independent Travelers. My next step is to fill these sites with enough critical mass to attract others to contribute.

From the above you may deduce that the simple starting of this blog is the thing that I believe will most affect my pursuit of life long learning. My new online presence opens opportunities for learning. By using this blog and other blog and feed searches like technorati and Web 2.0 tools I will try to find other travel enthusiasts to share in this independent travel forum.

My only critique of the of the learning program is that some of the learning sections were too librarian centric. This is a mild criticism and I would enjoy completing other learning programs librarian centric or not.

John

Audiobooks and Other Downloadables

I visited SuffolkWave to see their offering of downloadables and very impressed with their selection.

One comment I'll make though is that it would be nice if they had a search parameter for only items that were in stock.

My mother likes mysteries and I was able to sort this list by author but it would have been nice to see only the authors in stock. As a consolation you can reserve but I'm not sure how the notification system works.

I did download an Italian language course that was interesting. "Learn in your car Italian complete" I've tried one chapter so far and found it helpful.

John

Podcasts

I had trouble recommending a podcast on traveling in Italy not because there wasn't alot to choose from but audio descriptions of Italy somehow seam lacking. I did try one that had nice descriptive sections on different tourist attractions in Florence, Venice and Rome.

http://podcasts.yahoo.com/series?s=93c93279bdd1299175e84cafe87a08e5

I will recommend one that I liked on learning Italian. It has a different take on learning. You learn through jokes. They tell typical Italian jokes and then translate. It's not for beginners in the language but if you have a background in Italian they can be fun.

There are 116 episodes so far and you can subscribe. This is one that I will add to my list of things to get done. I hope I find the time.

http://podcasts.yahoo.com/series?s=b1fab0f82e0c6427daa33591d3ed574e

John

You Tube Video - Festa dei Serpari (Snakes)

A number of years ago we took a trip to the south of Italy. We visited the regions of Campangna and Puglia. On our way back to Rome we visited a small town in Abruzzo called Cocullo for the annual Snake Festival (Festa dei Serpari)

The whole town comes out with real snakes and they put them on a statue of their patron saint and march around town. Local television is always there and many people dress up in historical costumes. It's one long crazy day.

Here's a You Tube video of the event. The video is from an Italian variety show so you have to wait a minute for the snake festival to start. It's in Italian but you don't need to speak Italian to know what's going on when they get to the snake part.

Enjoy
John

You Tube Video - Festa dei Serpari (Snakes)

A number of years ago we took a trip to the south of Italy. We visited the regions of Campangna and Puglia. On our way back to Rome we visited a small town in Abruzzo called Cocullo for the annual Snake Festival (Festa dei Serpari)

The whole town comes out with real snakes and they put them on a statue of their patron saint and march around town. Local television is always there and many people dress up in historical costumes. It's one long crazy day.

Here's a You Tube video of the event. The video is from an Italian verity show so you have to wait a minute for the snake festival to start. It's in Italian but you don't need to speak Italian to know what's going on when they get to the snake part.

You Tube Video

Enjoy
John

Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

I looked at a few Travel tools and thought Real Travel and Gusto were interesting.

On Real Travel http://realtravel.com/ you can search by travel destination to get reviews on hotels, restaurants itineraries etc. They have some paid travel information on hotels etc but they also have reviews and blogs by travelers.

I found it an easy way to search for blogs about destinations in Italy. There is also a nice feature that lists near by destinations. From there you can start new searches for blogs and ideas.

Gusto http://www.gusto.com/ was a similar site but set up more as a social network of travelers. I'll have to see if I can find some independent travelers there to network with. The few I looked at were more of the tour type travelers.

John

Independent travel summary

This is a word document on Zoho Writer. If you want to have access to use, add or modify this form please comment with you e-mail address and I will share it with you.

INDEPENDENT TRAVEL SUMMARY

This is a Template Document for a description of an INDEPENDENT TRAVEL EXPERIENCE

Please feel free to use this template or use your own format to describe your travel experiences. You may find many items on this form that apply to your travel experiences; please try to resond to all that apply. Even the simplest tip form your travel experiences could be what sets off a chain of events that brings fellow traveler to that sweet-spot of independent travel. We've all been there and travel to get there again.

This Template is only meant as a guide to help you describe the aspects of your trip that would be usefull to fellow independent travelers. It is my hope that over time the template will become more inclusive and refined as it is used by travelers of different tastes, backgrounds and experience levels. Please feel free to change, augment or refine anything you wish.

Independent Travel Summary

Writer's information

Date

Name

E-mail

Blog

Other Contact info

Travel Destination Info

Travel Date

Travel Companions/Group Size

Type of Travel (General purpose .ie Business, Historical, Art, Food, General Tourist .etc)

Country Visited

Regions Visited

Cities

City Districts

For each Region visited

What Cities did you visit

Any other destinations of note

How well do you understand the local language/customs

Over all how did you

Get in

Get around

Get out

Itineraries

For specific cities or towns

Get in

Get around

What did See/Do (Museums, Churches, Historical Monuments etc.)

Itineraries

Eat

Drink

Stay safe

Get out