I went to Italy for the last week of August '97. It was my first time vacationing overseas, not counting Israel. We flew into Rome, hit Capri, Florence, Pisa, Venice, and flew out of Milan. Italy is a country of churches and museums, and you will find lots and lots of websites about the Vatican and the Duomo and the amazing Uffizi Gallery, so I'm not going to say too much about them.

One culture-shocky aside about visiting Europe was the fact that smoking is not considered socially graceless there, and coming from New York, where smoking has practically gone out of style, I often had a hard time breathing. Italians in general are either very polite and helpful or extremely rude, but regardless of what mode they are in, they sure do gesture a lot.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was visiting all of the synagogues and small Jewish communities in Italy.

This is the synagogue in Florence. It was built in 1882, and has an interesting history, as do all of the synagogues in Italy. Florence is a beautiful and ancient city, with galleries galore. I have always been a "2-dimensional" kind of art appreciator, but I think visiting Florence has forced me to develop a new appreciation for sculpture. I spent way too much money at the shopping scene by the Ponte Vecchio, but my family was happy with the loot.

Since my traveling friend and I keep kosher, we kind of lived on the tunafish and fruit-rollups that we brought with us. We also raided the fruit vendors every day. One important difference that exists when you're buying fruit in Italy is that if you touch the fruit rather than indicate to the nice man which ones you would like to buy, you will get slapped and yelled at in Italian. Keeping kosher outside of New York can be a challenge sometimes. You haven't lived until you find yourself in a strange motel room having tunafish, Coke and a nectarine for breakfast. Again. Uch. There are currently nine kosher restaurants in Italy, and you can find them by going to the very useful kosher restaurant database. We actually ate one normal meal in Gam Gam, a restaurant run by Chabad of Venice, which was clean, stylish, and served delicious Italian cuisine.

Speaking of Venice, we spent an unusual Shabbat there. Venice is an incredible city. I had heard about the canals of course, but I didn't realize that the entire city is made up of canals. Cars are literally not allowed in Venice. People hop a ferry the same way I hop the D-train in the morning. I do wonder where they go though, because aside from souvenir merchants, not too many people seemed to have jobs. The Venice ghetto is where the original word "ghetto" was coined, and there is quite a bit of Jewish history there. Our Shabbos meals were hosted by Chabad people, who were incredibly warm, generous and generally wonderful. (No mention of the Rebbe and/or Moshiach, btw.) Praying in a synagogue that was hundreds of years old was a very moving Shabbat experience for me. When you live in Brooklyn, with a synagogue on practically every block, you tend to take them for granted.

I love to travel, but it is good to be home.