Safety on bridges - ideas after the Venice Tragedy for Pregnant Recent Bride

 It has not been a good year for brides. One killed in the USA by a drunken driver. 

One in Iraq with more than 100 killed at her wedding. Now a pregnant woman on her honeymoon killed in Venice after marrying less than a month ago .

What can be done to prevent an accident like the last one this ever happening again? 

1 Vehicles should brake if a driver's eyes shut because he is dozy or unconscious. 

2 All bridges should have safety inspections with visible certificates, like toilets in fast food places. Then local papers could check and make a fuss about any bridge not showing up to date certification.

3 Vehicles should have sprinkler systems like buildings. 

4 Planes have co-pilots. A vehicle carrying more than 20 people should have a co-pilot. That could be a passenger who gets a reduced fare after a fifteen minute training course and rehearsal of taking over controls. 

Any more suggestions from you or elsewhere in the world? Let us know.

Useful Websites

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12594485/Venice-bus-tragedy-honeymoon-couple-21-dead.html#comments

https://me.mashable.com/culture/33111/tragic-wedding-fire-in-northern-iraq-gross-negligence-blamed-for-over-100-fatalities

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bride-killed-speeding-dui-driver-golf-cart-wedding-south-carolina-rcna82377

Please share links to your favourite posts.

The World's 50 Most Beautiful Cities

Fifty cities - just the right number to do one a year for a lifetime? two a year if you are over fifty.  On a round the world air ticket?

Do you agree with their list?

Paris comes first. French wine and French food add to the enchantment. Yes, I love to return to Paris. 'Je ne regrette rien,' (I don't regret anything) as Edith Piaf sang.


In Europe, London is high up the list.

 Prague sneaks in at the end.

Italy- Venice
Yes, Venice is there.


German flag.

Germany
The Romantic Road has several photo to die for places, but many are tiny villages, Rothenburg, stop, snap, move on.

Belgium
The beautiful city is Bruges. Known for chocolates. And lace. And little bridges over the water.

Poland
If you were to take only the old town of a city, you might have a different list. I would rate old Warsaw which has been rebuilt from paintings. Cracow has a stunning main square, but too small to count as a city.








Switzerland
I loved the cities in Switzerland such as Zurich with its Chagall windows in the cathedral, and also Lucerne with the covered bridge, but you could do them in a weekend, a day if you picked the right day and were fast.



Britain
In England London is definitely a city. But what about Cambridge? You could fill the list with American or British cities alone. But what if you had to pick one city from every country?



The USA
Yes, San Francisco had to be in the list.

What about Canada?
I would hardly call Toronto a beautiful city. I prefer Montreal.

Asia
In Asia I would certainly rate Singapore.






 I choose to live there much of the year. The giant waterfall in the mall next to terminal two at the airport.































The flower filled drive from the airport. Stunning modern architecture. Chinatown, Little India, Gardens by the Bay

Let's just suppose you are compiling a travel agency brochure, or in this case a flight and destination guide.

How do you define a city? By size?

By enough to do for a week's holiday?

What will you do while you are there? In Canada enjoy the maple syrup and bring some back.

In New Zealand and Australia, hunt down some manuka honey.
 In Britain look for marmalade.

Useful Websites
The World's 50 Most Beautiful Cities
Australian Manuka Honey
https://www.comvita.com.au/purest-source/manuka-honey/rangeAU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81nuka_honey
Singaporeair.com

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

How To Find Toastmasters In Italy (and worldwide) and translate Italian (and other languages)

Problem
I'm probably going to Italy in the next year and would like to find some people who speak English and attend a social and networking meeting. Are there any Toastmasters clubs in big cities or near holiday destinations? Any point looking now, when I don't yet have a trip planned? (And the same goes for a couple of other countries.)

Yes, because :
1 SAVE TIME & MONEY
When I do plan to go to Italy or another country I shall be in a rush so researching the Toastmasters clubs several months in advance will come in handy. It's a rush at home to research when you are busy at the last minute booking hotels and travel tickets. It's a rush to research on the day when you should be catching a coach tour or co-ordinating meeting colleagues.

2 LANGUAGE PROBLEMS SOLVED
Last time in a hotel I found I had to pay for the three-day internet access to go onto a website in a hotel for three minutes to get a phone number. Finally, the websites assume you are Italian (or German in Switzerland) and send everything in a foreign language so you will wish you researched earlier at home in an English speaking country.

Looking at a website in English, one club has said it meets Giovedi. Help! I know hundreds of Italian words and can read whole pages of Italian and get the gist but I am suddenly stumped. I could be missing breakfast in a hotel trying to check all this before a 15 minutes free internet session times out. Giovedi is Thursday.

I have also learned or been reminded about placenames: that the Italian for Florence is Firenze. Milan is Milano. Rome is Roma. Genova is Genoa. I have noticed some abbreviations. RM is Rome. MI is Milan. TO is Torino. GE is Genova. VI is Vicenza. CO is Como. FI is Florence.

Veneto is not the city of Venice but a region of Northern Italy.

I have picked up some general vocabulary. Costa is not cost but coast. Di is of.

I clicked on some placenames and up came Wikipedia in Italian. No sign of the English flag or the word English which you might see on the top of page one of a tourist site or hotel website or a blog or blog post created in Wordpress.

So I googled 'translate Wikipedia into English'. It said look on the sidebar (on the left of the screen). Nothing useful appeared in the first few lines.  I had almost given up when, at the end of the column, I found:

In altre linge (meaning in other language)
Deutsch
English (Hurray! We found it.)
Hrvatski (I looked that up. It's Croatian.)
Portuguese (It appeared with an accent too small for me to identify so I have given the English.)

2 TRIP PLANNING
It could help you re-route your trip before booking. Just looking at the website has already taught me some handy things, such as that there are four clubs in Milan - which would make it worthwhile staying overnight in Milan on a side trip from Switzerland (which I did to see opera at La Scala).

If I had told my family the days of the week when I could visit Toastmasters, and written to the clubs to find out if they were still meeting, I could have told my family that a Toastmasters meets in Milan on Thursday. Then we could have booked months in advance for expensive opera seats when they were still available at the cheaper price which we were willing to pay, for the in demand day, Friday.

Answer
Using the website Toastmasters International Find A Club I found twenty clubs in Italy. 20! If you are alone in Rome or nervous in Naples, go to a club which welcomes and helps potential speakers. (Do you have to give a speech at a wedding? Here's the place to go for help.) It's great entertainment. In Rome there's one every Tuesday.

How To Make Contact
No need to hunt for the right person in the club to contact. On the Toastmasters International website you just click on email.
That's the theory. Sometimes it works like a dream and if you've included your own phone number they ring back five minutes later!

However, I suggest you do this at least a week in advance, not on the day. You occasionally find a club where the person listed is away on business. Or the committee has just changed and they have not updated the website. You might find the club has closed for Xmas or summer holidays or forever.

If I don't get a reply from a club within 24 hours, I email another club in the area. I sometimes end up going there instead or in addition. You might even hear of a new club which is starting and not yet listed on websites.

I have listed the following in alphabetical order by city:

BOLOGNA
Toastmasters Two Towers, Bologna, BO, Italy. 6.30. One Monday our of three.

COMO
The Como Lakers, Como, CO, Italy. The first and third Thursday of each month at 7.30-9.30 pm.
Lake Como is a tourist destination in summer.

FLORENCE
1 Firenze Toastmasters, FL, Italy. On the second and fourth Thursday at 6.45 pm.
2 Toastmasters Academy, Florence, FI, Italy, 7.30pm -9pm Wednesday. I presume that's every Wednesday and not just one Wednesday a month but you'd better ring to be sure.
Florence, known for art and the bridge.

GENOA
Erzelli Toastmasters, Genova, GE, Italy. First and third Wednesdays from 6 to 8 pm.

MILAN
1 The Milliners, Milan, MI, Italy. Every other Monday at 7 pm.
2 Milan-Easy Toastmasters Club, second and fourth Tuesday at 6.45 pm.
3 Navigli District Toastmasters, Milano, Ml, Italy. 7.30 every other Monday.
4 The Xplorers, MI, Italy. 6.45 Every month, first and third Tuesdays.
MONZA
Next to Milan, 9 miles from city centre of Milan but the outskirts of the two cities are only three miles apart if you are driving. Speaking of driving, Monza is famous as the centre for Italy's Formula one.

NAPLES
Naples Toastmasters Club, Naples, NA, Italy. On the first and third Tuesdays at 6.30 pm.

ROME
1 Toastmasters INAIL, Roma, RM, Italy. 12.30-2.30, 1st and 3rd Wednesday.
2 SPQRs, Rome, RM, Italy. On Wednesday lunchtime, 12-1 pm. Sounds like a company club.
3 Toastmasters Roma, RM, Italy. 6.45 every Tuesday. Contact them through the website.

TURIN
1 Radiant Rhetoric, T o r i n o, on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday at 7.15 pm.
2 Toasting in the Sky, Torino.
3 Trucks and Tricks in Torino.
4 Toastmasters Torino, Giovedi (Thursday) first and third Thursdays at 7 pm.
It took me a while, plus a few searches, to find out that Torino is called Turin in English - and it's famous for the Turin shroud, reputed to show Jesus! Four Toastmasters clubs in a tourist destination.

VERONA
Toastmasters Monza, The Verona, San Massimio, (VR), Italy Milan-Easy Toastmasters Club.; Vicenza Toastmasters Club, Costabissara, VI, Italy, second and fourth Thursday.

Toastmasters in Italy and Worldwide
If you are already a Toastmaster (many clubs many members worldwide, you could start a club with the help of a new members' pack available free from head office if you can muster about twenty potential members from your company or just by advertising and getting everybody together at a restaurant or coffee bar. A good place to advertise is on MeetUp.

If you are on holiday or business anywhere in the world, you can join a Toastmasters club, attend a meeting, mentor a member by Skype, go to the annual contests for serious speeches in autumn and humorous speeches in Springtime.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, member of HOD and Harrovians in London, England and Braddell Heights Advanced club in Singapore. I am the winner of more than 50 ribbons for Best Speaker, Best Evaluator and Table Topic (impromptu speech). I won three ribbons in one evening this month at Harrovians. I have judged competitions and run workshops on public speaking and attended meeting in China, the Czech Republic, Singapore, Thailand and the UK and attended the world finals in Las Vegas, USA.

Speakers' contest at the Business School near Baker Street station in central London, England.

This post was compiled Feb 2018. Please bookmark this page but update on the Toastmasters website if you wish to attend a meeting. Share your favourite posts with friends. I have several more posts on Toastmasters on this website and on my Toastmasters blogs, and posts on Italy, St Valentine in Terni and waterfalls, and the Osteria Modigliani Restaurant in London, England. Also see my other websites: Luxury for less and luxury travel for less.

How To Drink Prosecco Cocktail Called Spritz in Venice

In Venice, Italy, bartenders and residents will make you a spritz drink, which is not the white wine and soda or similar non-alcoholic mixer of the USA and UK, but a three-part drink. You mix one third Prosecco, one third Campari (a branded drink with a bitter herb flavour), and the last third is the carbonated non-alcoholic mixer.

I was told this by a sparkling-eyed retired Italian from Venice. He is from there and he and his wife live there part of the year.

Wikipedia says:
The drink is prepared with prosecco (or champagne) wine, a dash of some bitter liqueur such as Aperol, Campari, Cynar, or, especially in Venice, with Select. The glass is then topped off with sparkling mineral water.

I seem to remember a white wine Spritzer is a drink which is less alcoholic and cheaper. The spritz or sparkle is added by the cheaper drink.

I asked, "Is it to save money?"

His wife, equally gleeful at the memory, tells me,

"No, because Campari is quite expensive. We like the flavour!"

What to see and Do in Venice
St Mark's Square
Cathedral
Carnival
Carnival masks in museum
Glass Museum
Gondola ride
Walking tour of the original Ghetto and Jewish sites and sights
St Michael's Cemetery
Shop for glass, lace, masks, art and souvenirs
Lido beach.

Side trips or two centres?
Also in Italy:
Verona - Romeo and Juliet (statue of Juliet on baloney and house museum) and opera
Rome - Roman remains such as the Colosseum
Florence - Art Gallery and covered bridge

Venice Cemetery
Do you like history or music? Some famous people in the cemetery. Wikipedia says:

Along with neighbouring San Cristoforo della Pace, the island was a popular place for local travellers and fishermen to land. Mauro Codussi's Chiesa di San Michele in Isola of 1469, the first Renaissance church in Venice, and a monastery lie on the island, which also served for a time as a prison.

San Cristoforo was selected to become a cemetery in 1807, designed by Gian Antonio Selva, when under French occupation it was decreed that burial on the mainland (or on the main Venetian islands) was unsanitary. The canal that separated the two islands was filled in during 1836, and subsequently the larger island became known as San Michele. Bodies were carried to the island on special funeral gondolas. Among those buried there are Igor Stravinsky, Joseph Brodsky, Jean Schlumberger, Christian Doppler, Frederick Rolfe, Horatio Brown, Sergei Diaghilev, Ezra Pound, Luigi Nono, Catherine Bagration, Franco Basaglia, Paolo Cadorin, Zoran Mušič, Helenio Herrera, Emilio Vedova, and Salvador de Iturbide y Marzán. The cemetery is still in use today.

Where To Stay
As a teenager, I was taken by my parents to stay in Lido de Jesolo. My parents were disappointed that it was not on the mainland and involved time and money to travel into Venice. At that time staying at Lido de Jesolo offered a beach holiday as well as being cheaper than staying in the city.

Wikitravel has an extensive list of accommodation divided by price. Tripadvisor gives detailed reviews from the public.

Useful Websites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spritz_(alcoholic_beverage)

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
See my other posts on Italy and different posts in http://luxurytravelforless.co.uk
Books by Angela Lansbury are on amazon.com and lulu.com

CALENDAR 2018: New Year, Valentine's, Remembrance Day, Carnival, Xmas and more

Problem
I read about events after they have started and it's too late to go. 

Answer
For next year, you and I have a calendar, listing the main holiday dates and tourist events and celebrations.

A quick reminder of October - Dec 2017.
2017 LAST QUARTER
OCT 13-15 Chocolate Show, Olympia, London, England.
Oct 31 Halloween.

NOVEMBER
Nov 5 Guy Fawkes Night (UK, especially Lewes, Sussex. Remembers Parliament saved from Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot.) Fireworks all over UK, public displays. Buy tickets.

DECEMBER
Dec 22 El Gordo, big prize of the national lottery, seen on TV, announced by a choir of children.
Dec 24 Christmas Eve. Many offices and shops close lunch time.
Dec 25 Christmas Day.
Dec 26 Boxing Day UK. Sales start in shops and online.
Dec 31 New Year's Eve Worldwide, starting Australia, then Europe, then Americas. Public Fireworks in London. Buy tickets and souvenirs. Watch on TV.

CALENDAR 2018

JANUARY

January 1st  New Year's Day Parade, California, USA. Morning Concert and ballet from Vienna, Austria, televised in Europe.

January Sales. 

Jan 5th Three Kings. 

Jan 25th Burns Night . 

Jan 27th Holocaust Day. 

and Carnival in Venice Italy.

FEBRUARY: 

Chocolate month. 

Feb 13 Pancake Day. 

Feb 14 Valentine’s Day. 

MARCH

March 1st St David's Day, Wales. 

March 11 Mother's Day UK.

March 17 St Patrick's Day, Ireland. 

March 23 St George’s Day, England.

March 24 Oxford and Cambridge Boat race. 

March 30 Easter Good Friday. 

APRIL

April 1st Fools Day. Easter Sunday.

April 2 Easter Monday.

April 23 St George’s Day, England.

April 25 ANZAC Day, Australia and New Zealand.

MAY

May 1st May Day. 

JUNE

June 17 Father's Day.

JULY

July 2-15, 2018, Wimbledon. 

AUGUST

August 3-11 Eisteddfod music festival, Cardiff, Wales. 

Aug 3-25 Edinburgh Tattoo, Scotland.
Aug 9-19 Bristol Balloon Fiesta, Bristol, UK. 

Aug 22-23 Battle of the flowers, Jersey, British Channel Islands. 

SEPTEMBER 

Oktoberfest, beer tents in Munich, Germany.

OCTOBER

Oct 12-21 Eurochocolate Exhibition, free entry, Perugia, Umbria, Italy. (Annual but dates vary.)

2018 Notting Hill Carnival will begin at 09:00 on

Sunday

,

26 August

and ends at 08:00 on

Monday

,

27 August

All times are in United Kingdom Time.

Oct 31 Halloween. 

NOVEMBER

Nov 5th Guy Fawkes. 

Nov 11th Remembrance Day. 

Chocolate week and Chocolate Show, UK.

International Balloon Fiesta, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

DECEMBER

Dec 24 Xmas Eve. 

Dec 25 Xmas. 

Dec 26 Boxing Day. 

Dec 31 New Year's Eve. 

******************************************
More Information From:
EVENTS
www.thechocolateshow.co.uk

TOURIST BOARDS / INFORMATION
http://www.antor.com (Association of National Tourist Organizations.)
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk
www.visitbritain.org
https://www.wikipedia.org
https://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page

COMMERCIAL SITES / BOOKINGS
https://www.booking.com/index.en
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk

Author, Angela Lansbury, travel writer.

Summer's Over! What Holiday Fun now? Ice Hotels or Ice Wine?

Ice chapel in Ice hotel, Quebec, Canada. Photo by Chenslyuan in Wikipedia.

Problem
Yes, summer's over. I just missed the end of the Disney sand sculptures in Belgium, which ended Sunday 1st October. So what is going on in the winter months?

Answer
Now is the time to be thinking about Christmas and Spring, before everything gets booked up.

LONDON, ENGLAND, UK
In London in December there will be pantomime shows in theatres.

Restaurants will be offering Christmas lunches and dinner from December, with festive decorations, green Christmas trees hung with baubles, and red and gold Christmas crackers on the tables. For family and club and office parties, organisers buy gifts, Christmas cards, wrapping paper with bows, real of fake Christmas trees, decorations, Christmas crackers for tables.

Christmas crackers on sale in UK supermarkets. The price comes down after Christmas Day.

A red Christmas cracker.  Crackers usually contain a gift and / or hat, and a motto or joke.

A Christmas cracker with season decoration.

 Paper hats in assorted colours from Christmas crackers.

Christmas cracker photos by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I can look for carols and carol singers under the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. I could enjoy concerts in churches.

Red Santas will be in their white grottoes welcoming children in the shopping malls. English pubs will be serving adults warming red mulled wine smelling of spices.

I shall never tire of hot turkey with thick gravy and roast potatoes, followed by a little dome of hot black Christmas pudding with warm yellow custard.

Everybody at meetings will be serving mince pies, sometimes cold, sometimes hot. At home we will eat mince pies warm, with hot custard.

I could go to Midnight mass on Christmas Eve, looking for advertisements in local newspapers.

Christmas tree with baubles in public buildings in London.

Christmas greetings and silver snowflake decorations in a Waitrose supermarket in London, UK.

Christmas pudding.

Christmas pudding served with hot custard.

Photos by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

RUSSIA
If I don't want to partake of Christmas religious festivities I could take a trip to Russia and celebrate Grandfather Frost.

CHINA
Frost? Ice? Snow? From Dec 24 2017 to Feb 25, 2018, the city of Harbin in China holds the ice and snow festival with ice carvings. I have always wanted to go there.

SWEDEN
I could go to the Ice Hotel in Sweden. I have always wanted to go there. Only £1,154 for three nights including flights. I have plenty of choice. Ice hotels are built in Canada, Romania, Switzerland. You have to move out in March, when your hotel starts to melt!

No point booking the same room next year. Since they are starting all over again, they will probably do a different design.

How about an igloo?

LONDON, ENGLAND
Perhaps I shall settle for a cocktail in the Ice Bar in London. I have always wanted to go there.

New Year's Eve I expect to see the fireworks around the world on TV. I could drink ice wine.

New Year's Day if I am in London or Europe, picking up English TV,  I shall see the morning Concert from Vienna, Austria.

I shall be planning my year's travels.

ITALY - Carnevale (Carnival)
The Carnival in Venice, Italy, starts in January and ends in February. 2018 Carnival of Venice will begin on

Saturday

27 January 2018
and ends on

Tuesday

13 February 2018. (All dates are in United Kingdom Time.)

Watch the 2017 carnival on YouTUbe, with lots of boats moving towards the arched Rialto Bridge, to the sound of Italian music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q4NA5gJfIc (Venice carnival 2017)

A big carnival is held in the beach resort of Vareggio in Tuscany. (You can reach it by train from Pisa, Sienna and Florence.)

Other Cities  - also have carnivals.
A Carnival including a Battle of Oranges is held at Ivrea, Piedmont (Piedmont means foot of the mountain), Italy, Feb 10-13 2018. The word in Italian for events is e v e n t i. The letter i is Italian for plural. (I learned that from Duolingo.com . See my other posts on learning Italian.)

If you want to go south to the warmest spot, try Sicily which has a carnival with flowers.

SPAIN
I could go to Spain and enter the Christmas lottery, hoping to win the big prize El Gordo to fund umpteen trips. If I were in Spain in January I could see the three king's parade on their Christmas Eve on January 5th.

I shall go to sleep and dream.

More Information from:
UK
https://www.icebarlondon.com
www.visitlondon.com
www.visitbritain
AUSTRIA
https://www.austria.info/uk
BELGIUM
www.visitoostende.be
ITALY
www.visititaly.com
http://www.italia.it/en/travel-ideas/culture-and-entertainment/february-the-month-of-carnival.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q4NA5gJfIc (Venice carnival 2017.)
SPAIN
www.tourspain.org
RUSSIA
www.visitrussia.org.uk
ICE HOTELS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_hotel
CANADA - ICE HOTEL
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotel_Review-s1-g155033-d184516-Reviews-Hotel_de_Glace-Quebec_City_Quebec
SWEDEN - ICE HOTEL
https://www.discover-the-world.co.uk/destinations/icehotel-holidays
ICE WINE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_wine

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
See and buy my books on Amazon.com and Lulu.com
Link to me on LinkedIn and Facebook. Watch for my forthcoming website on travel in Wordpress. lease share links to your favourite posts.

TRANSLATE THIS FOR FRIENDS BY COPYING SECTIONS INTO GOOGLE TRANSLATE.

Italian regions: eg Liguria, Christopher Columbus, Genoa and Portofino

Problems
Which regions of Italy contain which well known town?

Answer:
Here's a summary and some mnemonics or memory aids.
First which region is where?

I could look at them north to south.

For convenience I have put them in alphabetical order.

	North-West Nord-Ovest	Aosta Valley Liguria Lombardy Piedmont	Milan
	North-East Nord-Est	Emilia-Romagna Friuli-Venezia Giulia Trentino-South Tyrol Veneto	Bologna
	Centre Centro	Lazio Marche Tuscany Umbria	Rome	1
	South Sud	Abruzzo Apulia Basilicata Calabria Campania Molise	Naples
	Islands Isole or Insulare (adj)	Sardinia Sicily	Palermo

ABRUZZO
AOSTA VALLEY
APULIA
BASILICATA
CALABRIA
CAMPANIA - (Positano, Amalfi drive; I've had a painting of pretty Positano on the kitchen wall for decades!)
EMILIA-ROMANA
FRUILI-VENEZIA GIULIA
LAZIO
LIGURIA - Genoa (Portofino, San Remo)

LOMBARDY
MARCHE
MOLISE
PIEDMONT
SARDINIA
SICILY
TRENTINUO-SOUTH TYROL
TUSCANY - Florence
UMBRIA - Perugia
VENETO

Regions[edit]

Flag	Region Italian name							Capital city				Metropolitan cities
	Abruzzo Abruzzo							L'Aquila				-
	Aosta Valley Valle d'Aosta							Aosta				-
	Apulia Puglia							Bari				Bari
	Basilicata Basilicata							Potenza				-
	Calabria Calabria							Catanzaro				Reggio Calabria
	Campania Campania							Naples				Naples
	Emilia-Romagna Emilia-Romagna							Bologna				Bologna
	Friuli-Venezia Giulia Friuli-Venezia Giulia							Trieste				-
	ITALY							Rome
	Lazio Lazio							Rome				Rome
	Liguria Liguria							Genoa				Genoa
	Lombardy Lombardia							Milan				Milan
	Marche Marche							Ancona				-
	Molise Molise							Campobasso				-
	Piedmont Piemonte							Turin				Turin
	Sardinia Sardegna							Cagliari				Cagliari
	Sicily Sicilia							Palermo				Catania Messina Palermo
	Trentino-South Tyrol Trentino-Alto Adige							Trento				-
	Tuscany Toscana							Florence				Florence
	Umbria Umbria							Perugia				-
	Veneto Veneto							Venice				Venice

Here are my memory aids for the major cities and regions:
AA Aosta is in the Aosta Valley.
FT Florence is in Tuscany.
GL - GenoA is in LiguriA.
ML Milan in Lombardy; MiLan in LoMbardy.
NC - knackered and camping outside Naples in Campania; good and bad Company in Campania in Naples.
RL Rome is in Lazio. rOme is in laziO. Roaming through lazio, I am lazing oh.
UP - Umbria is the region whose capital is Perugia; UmbrIA and perUgIA
PS - Palermo is in Sicily
PT and TP - Piedmont you'll find Turin; Turin in Piedmont; Turin, turning in at the foot of the Mountain; pIedmoNT -TurIN
TTT Trento in Trentino-South Tyrol. TRENTO in TRENTinO- sOuTh TyrOl.
VV - Venice is in Veneto. VENice is in VENeto.

Story
The Liguria Tourist board PR company sent me a story about Liguria having lots of highly rated blue flag beaches. I frowned at the email. I'd never heard of Liguria where was it. Why hadn't she sent me a map which showed the location Liguria and some well known towns.

LIGURIA
Where is Liguria? Do I know it?
Of course the tourist board's job is to pump out focused stories. My job as a journalist to to research the area and make it popular and snappy and visually appealing and exciting. As Gandhi said, 'be the change you wish to see'. I looked up Liguria. Of course I know Liguria.

My next question is, anybody famous, any famous historical event connected with the area. Genoa. Birthplace of Christopher Columbus. You can't get more famous than that! You can't miss Columbus. You fly in to Christopher Columbus airport in Genoa.

Now I have set myself the task of memorising all the regions of Italy.

More story and pictures about Genoa and Christopher Columbus, including pictures, are in the next post.

Tips
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liguria
http://wikitravel.org/en/Genoa
http://www.italia.it/en/discover-italy/liguria.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.