Tag Archives: Italy

Posted in Family

It’s Grand to Be Grand

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by Bob Sparrow

Dylan, Emma, Addison and Mac

When Linda and I first got married, back when the earth was still cooling, she said she couldn’t wait to be a grandmother.  I can’t remember my stance on grandparenthood at the time, I was probably ambivalent, but I did mention to Linda that there was a step between where we were then and her being a grandmother – so, enter Dana and Jeff.  Her passion for being a grandmother came from a great relationship she had with her maternal grandmother, Petra, while growing up in Minnesota.  Linda actually wanted to name Dana, Petra, for which Dana still thanks me.  I, on the other hand, liked my grandparents, but I didn’t spend that much time with them and the time I did spend, I just felt it was time spent with some familiar ‘old people’.

Fast forward to today and I now think I invented grandparenthood!  We are fortunate enough to have four amazing grandchildren.  I’m going to go on a bit about them; perhaps I’m a bit biased, but I hope any of you grandparents out there would feel the same way about yours.

Emma

The first grandchild came from my daughter, Stephanie and husband, Jason, a boy named Dylan.  Now, at 12 years old, he has become quite an accomplished piano player and has been in several bands as a keyboard player.

Dylan

Not only does he play the piano, but he composes his own songs, seemingly with very little effort – and they are quite good.  One day when he was at our house playing an original piece, I told him that he should hook up with someone who writes poetry and they could write some popular songs together.  He said that his school had a poetry writing contest and . . . he won!  So, don’t be surprised if he becomes a famous song writer!  He will be entering junior high this fall and is hopeful of getting into a performing arts high school in a couple of years.  His sister, Emma, who is 10, is a very accomplish dancer and has been for a number of years.  She is also blessed with a big personality and a beautiful smile.  Both Dylan and Emma attend an immersive Italian language school and are both fluent in the language.  This summer, when the family visited Italy, we saw several videos of Emma ordering various dishes and conversing with the servers in Italian.  She really seemed to enjoy it and the Italians said that she had a great accent.  She is a smart, adorable, talented young lady.

Addison

‘Turbo’

Our third and forth grandchildren, Addison and Maclin, came from our daughter, Dana and husband, Joe.  Addison is six going on 15!  She is very mature, has a very out-going personality, is very smart and has a great sense of humor.  She plays soccer and softball, and is currently taking golf and piano lessons.  She’s also has written and sings a couple original songs.  A year ago, the ‘girls’ went on a wine tasting weekend in Temecula and I got to babysit Addison – so the two of us went to the San Diego  Zoo, Safari Park in Escondido – it was one of the best 24 hours I’ve ever spent.   Mac’s nickname is ‘Turbo’, because he is always on the move and attacks things with reckless abandon.  At three, he loves sports, particularly hockey.  He is currently practicing hockey at the same rink father, Joe did when he was a kid.  One has to be at least five years old to play on a team, but one of the coaches saw Mac skate and said he wanted this three-year-old on his team now!!  It will be fun to see what he does with hockey.  He is also obsessed with two movies, for obvious reasons , The Might Ducks, a great story about a youth hockey team, and Top Gun – Maverick . he recites many of the lines from the movie and has a ‘Bomber Jacket’ that he sometimes sleeps in.  He seems to like nice clothes, as when he was asked when he wanted for his third birthday, the said, “a three-piece suit”.  Yes, a three-piece suit!!!  Because the family owns two restaurants and Joe is a certified Cordon Bleu chef, they both love to help Joe & Dana in the kitchen.

Fortunately, all four live within an hour, so we get to watch them grow up.  Like I’ve said, I’ve alwasys wanted to be a grandpartent!!  OK, maybe that wasn’t me, but now I love it!  So, with no travel plans for the next few weeks and the backyard finished, we’re looking forward to spoiling our grandchildren as much as possible.  We truly feel blessed.  Hope those of you with grandchildren feel exactly the same way!

Posted in travel

The Best of Travel, The Worst of Travel

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by Bob Sparrow

Best & Worst

For most of us the past two years have been the worst years for travel. Not so much that we went to uninteresting places or ran into people who thought of us as ugly Americans; no, Covid kept us from going anywhere at all. When I can’t travel, I think about traveling, more specifically, I think about places I’ve been, good and bad, and places I want to go.

So, in order to gather information, not just for me, but for all of our readers, you have a job:

Tell us where your best and worst travel destination have been and why they were best or worst. I’ll start by giving mine.

Robben Island with Table Mt. in the background

Best travel destination

I have to honestly say that I have two that are tied for best. South Africa in 2013 – Great tour of Cape Town, a visit to Ernie Els winery, the top of Table Mountain and to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 27 years imprisoned, and a story about how one woman made a difference with ‘tea bags’. The South African people were amazing – so nice and so friendly! We left Cape Town and went to Notten’s Bush Camp in the Sabi Sands Game Reserve in Kruger National Park, where we went on several safaris.  We saw the ‘Big 5’ – elephant, lion, leopard, rhino and African buffalo on our first trip into the savanna. Then on to Zimbabwe to see one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World – Victoria Falls – Spectacular! If you are a new reader, or want to reread the blog that I wrote about that trip, you can access it by copying and pasting these links:

Part 1 https://fromabirdseyeview.com/?p=1702

Part 2 https://fromabirdseyeview.com/?p=1725

Part 3 https://fromabirdseyeview.com/?p=1751

Part 4 https://fromabirdseyeview.com/?p=1803

Funicular up to Montecatini Alto

My other ‘best travel destination’ was to the Tuscany region of Italy – a trip we took in 2019 with a group of our neighbors, along with thirty-some-odd people from around the country. Our base was the great little town of Montecatini Terme, which is located between Florence and Pisa. Aside from visiting those two cities, we hit Siena, San Gemignani and Montecatini Alto – all unique in their own way. Our guide, Sergio, made the trip – he was informative and hilarious! After leaving Montecatini Terme, we spent several days in Cinque Terre – the beautiful Italian town that hangs on the cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean.  Great people we went with, great people we met, great food, great wine and a great guide. If you want more information on that trip, access the links below:

 

Part 1 https://fromabirdseyeview.com/?p=8425

Part 2 https://fromabirdseyeview.com/?p=8438

Part 3 https://fromabirdseyeview.com/?p=8443

Part 4 https://fromabirdseyeview.com/?p=8461

Part 5 https://fromabirdseyeview.com/?p=8479

Worst travel destination

“Enjoy shopping”

This one is easy. We were on a Mediterranean cruise in 2008 and made a stop in northern Africa to the city of Tunis in Tunisia. Off the ship we went to an open market where there were guards holding machine guns at the entrance and the exit of the market – I guess that’s in case you were planning of stealing something or a hostile takeover of the market!  We then went to a rug maker, who tried to sell us an ugly ‘magic carpet’ that they promised to ship home for us. Yeah, right!! We decided to stop at a café for a beer, which we ordered and paid for, but when our order came, it was a ‘non-alcoholic beer’! We told our server we wanted (and paid for) real beer and he said that because it was Sunday, they didn’t serve alcohol – something he might have mentioned when we ordered. Couldn’t wait to get back on the ship and on to our next destination.

Fortunately, we weren’t blogging yet, so no links!

OK, it’s your turn to share your travel adventures and misadventures in the ‘comment box’ below, let us know what your BEST and WORST travel destinations are – you don’t have to write a story about them if you don’t want to, you can just list them. Hopefully we can learn about places that should be on our ‘bucket list’ and about places we should make sure to avoid.

Posted in travel

Under the Tuscany Sun

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by Bob Sparrow

Imagine if you will the beautiful countryside of the rolling hills of Tuscany.  The fact is you will have to imagine it as the bandwidth the Hotel Ercolini e Savi is so thin, it could run around in a shower and never get wet, which means I am unable to send photos, but promise to when cyberspace allow.

The trip over was long and uneventful except for the Russian spy on our flight from LAX to Paris (insert photo of Russian spy here); more than likely she was coming back from just playing golf with Trump at Trump National Golf Club in Palos Verdes.  But that’s a blog for another time.

From Paris we flew to Florence where we were met by our tour guide, Sergio (insert picture of Sergio), who is a jolly (meaning he’s a bit over-weight) man with a great attitude and smile.  He knows Italy backwards and forwards (he was born there) and could seriously do stand-up comedy.  As I mentioned in a previous blog, your tour guide either makes or breaks your trip.  I felt so relieved upon meeting Sergio – there was no question he is going to make it great!

Our hotel is in the town of Montecatini Terme in the middle of the Tuscan region and this town is fabulous – not too big, not too small.  Great atmosphere, great restaurants and bars, friendly people.  Travel tip: go there!  That evening (Friday) we had a welcome dinner for all of the people on the tour, which numbered 42, all but two from the U.S..  We were a group of 12, there was a group from northern California of 16; the rest were from various parts of the US with one couple from Wales.  These were the people who we were going to spend the next eight days with so we were anxious to get to know them.  After Sergio explained all the fun and the rules, we enjoyed a nice dinner at the hotel and decided to head into the town square for an after-dinner drink.  (insert group photo of sitting in outdoor bar off the square of Montecatini), we eventually found our way back to the hotel, but since there was a bar next door that looked fun, we stopped for ‘just one more’.  We did finally get to our rooms for some much-needed sleep.

I’d like to say I had the best night’s sleep I had in a long time, and I did, but since our watches and phones were still on California time, the alarms never went off and we woke up at 8:25, when we had implicit instructions to be on the bus by 8:30 and DON’T BE LATE!  Not a good start . . . obviously we were late and got a nice round of applause when we entered the bus red-faced!  We were headed for Florence to spend the day and a beautiful day it was, weather-wise and experience-wise.  Prior to getting into the city, we headed to a hilltop site that provided us an extraordinary view of the entire city including the famous Ponte Vecchio (insert photo of city view showing Ponte Vecchio) The highlight, of course, was a trip to see Michelangelo’s David, of which I got a rather unusual photo (insert photo of David’s ass).  We were guided through the city’s churches, civic buildings and various statues and fountains – very interesting.  Back to the hotel, a short nap and a great dinner at a local restaurant just off the plaza in town

While our first full day was Under a Tuscan Sun, Sunday (where we did make it to the bus on time by the way!) started with a heavy rain shower, but quickly gave way to sun, which not-too-quickly gave way to more rain, as we motored to the town of Lucca.  Another great Italian town, this one with a city wall all the way around it (insert photo of city wall) and the rain ceased while we toured the city with a local guide, rented bikes and rode all the way around the city on the wall (insert photo of our unfortunate bike crash – it’s not true what they said about never forgetting how to ride a bike), toured the home/museum of composer, Giacomo Puccini, who wrote the operas, Madame Butterfly, La Boheme, and Turandot (from which the song Nessun Dorma comes).  On our way home we passed ‘Devil’s Bridge’ (photo and story later, maybe) stopped at a WWII museum and walked through a real old Nazi bunker – spooky! (photo of spooky Nazi bunker).

The trip has been awesome so far!! (insert photo of how awesome trip is) A Tuscan dinner out tonight somewhere, but I’ll have to write about that next time – hopefully Thursday.

P.S.  In the event my photos never come through, just look this stuff up on Google.

Arrivederci (photo of me saying, “See you later”)

Posted in travel

Finding La Dolce Vita

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by Bob Sparrow

A great lunch in the town square in Santa Marinella, Italy

Whoever said getting there is half the fun was on drugs . . . really good drugs. We left the house at 5:15 a.m. Thursday morning and arrived in Italy early Friday morning, around 7:00 a.m; scientifically speaking, Friday was the longest day of the year (the vernal equinox) and this year we had small airplane seats, a crying baby and an uneatable meal that I describe as ‘faux fowl’ to lengthen the already longest day. All this while you sat in the comfort of your home over the weekend sipping Mai Tais and channel surfing from your couch. Hey, I’m not complaining, I signed up for this, but just wanted to let you know what I go through to make sure you’ll have a good time.

We were met by our driver at the airport and traveled about 45 minutes up the road to the Hotel Villa Delle Palme, which was featured in the film, Las Dolce Vita. We spent two nights in the hotel that sits on the Mediterranean coast in the town of Santa Marinella. One afternoon we took the train into the port of Civitavecchia just to walk around and get our first taste of Gelato – no one does ice cream like Italy! We returned to enjoy a dinner at a top-ranked restaurant in our hotel. The next day we had a beautiful lunch in the quaint town square, mostly enjoying the people, who were smiling and accommodating, particularly the owner of the restaurant, who regaled us with stories we could hardly understand, but she told them with such enthusiasm that she had us all laughing as we dipped our French bread in their amazing olive oil and sipped our Chianti.

Villa Delle Palme Hotel

By noon the next day (Sunday) we were boarding the Riviera; it is magnificent. We made sure we got in line to sign up for the upgraded drink package (Just letting you know we’ve got our priorities straight).  We thought maybe we’d been black balled as word may have been passed around in the cruise industry that the ship will lose money on us before they hit their first port.  Our first meal is at Red Ginger, an amazing Asian restaurant – the sea bass is out of this world. After dinner we head to a magic show that, quite honestly, was very amateurish, but the drink package made it forgettable.

I’ll check in on Thursday of this week and keep you updated on where we’ve been and what we’ve seen. Yes, it’s a short one this time, but I’m still trying to figure out what day it is and where I am.

Hang in there, it will get better . . . or not.

 

Posted in opinion • travel

The Freaks at Venice Beach

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by Bob Sparrow

Venice-CA-1913-winwardave

Venice Beach circa 1905

On July 4, 1905 tobacco mogul, Abbot Kinney dug some canals, opened a few shops and launched ‘Venice of America’ next to Santa Monica Beach, hoping to ‘recreate’ Venice, Italy and attract lovers of art, music and culture – it did not.   Being the ever-astute businessman, he quickly scraped the idea of bringing the Renaissance to America and instead brought in exhibits, amusements and freak shows that attracted young counterculture artists, poets, and writers. I don’t know about artists and poets, but I’m here to tell you that the freaks have definitely survived – I was one of them last week, when I made my first visit to Venice Beach.  With summer drawing to and end, the usually packed boardwalk had thinned out, the freaks were fewer in numbers, but no less freaky and it seems that even some of the homeless people had gone home. What I noticed was a lot of older guys walking around taking pictures – I guess we were the freaks.

Muscle Beach

“Stop, no wimps allowed on Muscle Beach!”

In the heart of the Venice Beach boardwalk is ‘Muscle Beach’, where guys can workout in the open air on the sand. I thought it would be fun to drop in and do a workout, pump some iron, maybe throw in a clean and jerk. I was stopped at the entrance and told that I would give ‘Muscle Beach’ a bad name if I took off my shirt, and was admonished that if I tried to enter the workout area, a ‘jerk’ would certainly be part of my future.

Psychic

“Most of your future is ahead of you”

Curious about what my real future looked like, I moved on to a nearby Psychic Fortune Teller.  I knocked on the door to the psychic’s office or séance room or whatever it was, and a pregnant young lady, with a cell phone to her ear, appeared.   She whispered that she was on the phone with the water company, who was threatening to turn off her water, and asked me to sit down. As I sat there for about 10-15 minutes I got to thinking, didn’t she know I was coming,  and, do you really have to be a fortune teller to know that if you don’t pay your bill, they’re going to shut off your water.?   I may be parsing words here, but isn’t it an oxymoron to have a pregnant psychic woman ‘expecting’ – shouldn’t she ‘know’?

cookie

Chinese Fortune Cookie

With some trepidation I paid to have both palms and my face read. She examined my palms and told me, I was married and had 2 to 4 children. I think my wedding ring gave her a clue to my marital status and I’m guessing 80% of married people my age have between 2-4 children. I wanted to play along to see what other amazing revelations she had in store for me, so I said, “That’s unbelievable!” She smiled knowingly and droned on for about ten minutes, giving me such gems as, “You’ve had some conflicts in the past”, “You’d rather give orders than take them”, “You will travel somewhere” and other phrases she had memorized from Chinese fortune cookies. The only thing I really remembered hearing was “You’re going to make a lot of money next year” – I think that one was accurately divined. After rattling off hackneyed phrase after phrase, she suddenly stopped, got up and walked out of the room. It was like the meter had run out and my time was up, or she suddenly looked into her own future and saw the guy from the water company at the side of her house preparing to turn off her water. I left and walked down the boardwalk with a little more spring in my step, comforted by the thought that I was going to make a lot of money next year.

Venice canal

There’s canals here???

I asked about 10 or 12 people on the boardwalk where the canals were, and mostly I heard, “There are canals here?”  I started to explain the Venice connection, but no one seemed really interested.  I finally found the canals inland about two blocks off the beach. There are only six canals left, there were about twice that many originally, and they are only deep enough to accommodate very small boats and kayaks, but the homes around them were small, but quite nice.

If Abbot Kinney were alive today, he might be a bit disappointed that poetry and art are found on tee shirts, the music comes from homeless street musicians and the culture does not evoke the Renaissance, but the business man in him would probably appreciate the fact that millions still comes to see the freak shows every year.

Rolling guitar

A Renaissance Man?

 

Homeless piano

One jar for tips, the other for his 401(k)

 

Posted in Family

AMAZING FAMILY!

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suz linda

Suzanne & Linda

by Bob Sparrow

     Who has a better sister and wife than I do?  NoooooooooBody!!  At the risk of beating a dead horse, or at least an old horse, for our readers, I must revisit my 70th birthday celebration and thank a number of people who made it such an AMAZING event.  My first thank you goes to my lovely wife Linda, who orchestrated a weekend of surprise after surprise.  Granted when you have a husband who is totally clueless, it’s easy to pull off surprises, but nonetheless she did a masterful job – a week after the event, I still don’t suspect anything!

      With the ‘Big One’ approaching, Linda asked me how I wanted to celebrate the conclusion of my 70th trip around the sun.  I said I didn’t want a big party, just something with the FAMILY.  That was the end of my participation.  Several days later she told me that she’d booked four villas in Palm Desert at the Marriott Desert Springs, where we love spending a week every April at our timeshare.  Perfect, just the kids, grandkids and us.

Jackalope

Cocktails at Jackalope in the desert

     Late Thursday afternoon, while grubbing around in the yard, the doorbells rings, Linda asks me to get it.  I come to the door in tattered jeans and dirty t-shirt; it’s my brother, Jack and wife Sharon, I greet them with the warm welcome of, “What the hell are you guys doing here?!”  They responded with a Happy Birthday and that they are going to Palm Desert with us.  I’m thrilled.  Later that evening (I did sneak in a shower and change of clothes) the doorbell rings again and, still clueless, I go to the door and there are four couples of our good friends, Mark & Kathy, Jack & JJ, Bob & Marge and John and Judy – they’re standing at our front door singing Christmas carols that turn into Happy Birthday.  When we’re all seated at the bar in our family room, Linda brings out a small box and asks me to open it.  It is a brochure for a 12-day trip for two to Kathmandu, Nepal, which includes a 5-day trek through the foothills of the Himalaya!  My jaw drops!!!  She says, there is no way she’s going, that the trip is for my brother and me.  All I can say is “AMAZING!”

photo (9)

Jack, Suzanne & me

     By mid-day Friday we’re checking in at the Villas in Palm Desert.  When we got there, there is only one villa that has been cleaned and available, so we walked over to the hotel and had some lunch at poolside in perfect weather.  Upon our return I walked into the one villa we had and I see a man, with his back to us, sitting out on the deck, and assume I went into the wrong villa.  Then one of my favorite people and one of the funniest I know, turns around and wishes me a Happy Birthday – it’s Matt Sparrow, my nephew – Jack’s son.  Fast forward to mid-day Saturday and I get my annual birthday phone call from my sister, who always calls me and sings Happy Birthday the way Marilyn Monroe sang it to Jack Kennedy.  As I’m standing there listening to her, she walks in the door – she had just flown in from Scottsdale – AMAZING!  Later that afternoon close friends and ‘practically family members’, Mark, Kathy and daughter, Kristin (best friend of our daughter, Dana) arrived to celebrate the occasion.

joe dana

Joe & Dana

One last surprise remained.  I was told to stay in my villa as preparations for ‘the party’ Saturday evening were taking place in Joe & Dana’s villa.  When I was asked to ‘come to the party’ I was blown away.  Dana and Joe had decorated the villa with pictures at ‘food stations’ they’d created representing a number of the places we’ve visited, Italy (Meatballs marinara, Fried cheese, beef Carpaccio with lemon arugula), Africa (Moroccan lamb kabobs with Tzatziki sauce, veggie couscous, roasted plantains), Japan (Ahi and Yellowtail crudo, crying tiger beef skewers, garlic and chili edamame) and Hawaii (Kalua pork sliders on Hawaiian rolls, grilled pineapple, Ahi poke). All the food was AMAZING! There we also ‘drink stations’ from Ireland (beer and Irish whiskey), my Dad’s famous martinis at ‘Poppin’s Grotto’ and ‘Klappers’ (cheap rum and diet cola) named after my dearly departed best friend, Don Klapperich.  The birthday cake, in a ‘travel and music’ theme had a quote from me about traveling and seeing things a little differently than most.  Dana then gave me a box decorated in the ‘travel and music’ theme that she had put together, containing 70 individual birthday wishes from friends and family (you saw my sister’s in last week’s blog) – they were AMAZING!  A huge thank you to those who took the time to write something nice and send it back (for some I’m certain it took quite some time to find something nice to say).  Seriously, I am was touched and am blessed to have such wonderful friends.

3 kids

Stephanie, Jeff & Dana

Thank you to an AMAZING FAMILY, especially those who made this an unforgettable (even for a forgetful 70 year old) experience – Stephanie, Jason, Dylan & Emma; Dana & Joe, Jeff, Jack & Sharon, Suzanne, Matt, (Mark, Kathy & Kristin) and especially to Linda whose dedication to FAMILY is unsurpassed.  To quote Lou Gehrig, “I am the luckiest man on the face of the earth”.

    OK, enough with the birthday stuff, I’ve got some really interesting places to take you next year – hope you’ll enjoy them vicariously ‘from a bird’s eye view’.

HOPE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND AN ADVENTUROUS NEW YEAR! 

Posted in News • opinion

DUMB ACTS

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Headlines:  Maybe the Alzheimer’s test is in order.

Rick Perry had a stumble at the debate the other night,

His fumbling and his stalling suggest his brain has taken flight.

If you have three things to remember and you can only recall two,

Then perhaps the job of President is not the one for you.

Money:  If it’s Thursday the market must be up.

Who the heck can plan their budget in this age of market swings,

Never knowing from week to week what stock prices will bring.

If it isn’t Greece, it’s Italy or some company’s fallen flat,

We need to have a Ouija board – is there an app for that?

Sports:     No, football is not the most important thing…even in Happy Valley.

JoePa’s out at Penn State after sixty-one years,

Resulting in reactions from rioting to tears.

He was a  great coach in his prime but this should be understood,

He didn’t have the courage to stand up when he should.

Life:  We hear Kim Kardashian is available.

Piers Morgan has decided that he will quit his job,

On the “America’s Got Talent” judging panel mob.

His replacement will no doubt need to agree to certain terms:

Humor Sharon’s ramblings and don’t give Howie any germs.

The holidays are approaching…why not give someone a redposey?

www.redposey.com