I’m back in my Village of Solitude on the coast of western Sardinia – the place that timely bus service forgot – still shell-shocked and woozy from my trip to Umbria. As I reported previously, my Umbria research trip was gearing up to be an exhausting week of racing after…

It’s awards season again.  And this time I’m actually a finalist for one.   The 2007 Travvies are run by Upgrade: Travel Better and an as yet unrevealed series of events has landed me in the category of Best Single-Author Travel Blog. Regular readers know that I’m not opposed to popularity…

Dear gentle, devoted, morbidly curious readers (and everyone who’s reading this because they Googled ‘Paris Hilton’, ‘nubile students’, ‘Swedish virgins’ and/or ‘Caligula’ and found this post),  I’m writing to you from a bed the size of a trampoline, having just returned from soaking in a Jacuzzi, inspired by Caligula (or…

I’ve somehow managed to form a genial relationship with a group of folks that acquire material/reviews/articles for a series of high profile web sites. They are friendly, organized and they pay well and promptly. However, the people they acquire for – I’ll call them the “end-clients” – are scattered, indecisive…

Once again, I find myself gyrating through the Free Crap Dance and my moves, which have never been all that groovy, are looking especially graceless and unrhythmic. I’m leaving for a magazine assignment in less than two weeks to write about a region in a country that shall remain nameless,…