And God said

In the beginning there was Italy.

And so we are going for nearly three months, actually 11 weeks, some 78 days. Much of that time we'll be studying Italian in Siena, a city which was essentially the place of our "birth' as Italianophiles. That's such a clumsy word for something so graceful, so rounded, so perfect as our feeling of comfort when we are on those streets, almost as if we are home. We have no family there, nor are we from Tuscany or even Italian in our recorded genealogy. Anyway, I think you get the point.

So this is the journal of that trip, beginning before it begins. Starting with all those little (and some not so little) details which must take precedence before we are actually, well, on the road.