Taking the easy way out?
Today, I’m on my way to Italy. My plan is to visit our apartment in Fano, where 42 boxes from IKEA await me. Our apartment is new, and the boxes represent all of the furniture for inside the apartment. Except for a sleeper (pull out) couch and a love seat, which were delivered ready-to-go. Everything else, as you’d expect with IKEA, needs to be put together. Fun, ehh?
Internet and digital TV are supposed to be ready as well – from FASTWEB. Hopefully ADSL works better in Italy than in the US. SBC (now AT&T) couldn’t get it right for weeks at our offices a few years back, so we switched to business cable Internet access.
I’m going to chronicle my trip here. It will be from the perspective of the differences, good and bad, that I notice while in Italy.
As I prepared yesterday with packing and such, my level of excitement for the trip grew. My goal is to leave in a week and have the apartment 100% inhabitable by anyone who visits, or anyone who might rent it from us. I have a renter set to be there June 1, as well as some friends who will be staying there a few nights in very late May, so this is not an option. It needs to be done.
I also need to get furniture for the terrace, which is almost as large as the apartment itself. Plus, I need to do some banking chores, insurance chores, etc. I’m sure there will be plenty of material for my blog from these tasks alone.
See about halfway down the page here:
http://www.italianrealestateassist.com/irea_picture_gallery_1.htm
… and you’ll get a good sense for the size of the terrace.
Because I travel over so frequently, I fly economy to save some dough. Flying economy is most often a drag, because it’s hard to get into a comfortable position to sleep. I’ve found a new “device” to help with this, so I’m anxious to try it out. If it works, I’ll review it here and share its benefits with you. If it doesn’t, I’ll tell you that as well!
I expect the flights will be packed. It was hard to get a ticket at all, and impossible to get a cheap ticket. Frequent flyer ticket? Ha ha … that’s a joke.
It appears that Americans are going to Italy this spring and summer. It looks like foreign travel has recovered very nicely in the post-9/11 era. It also seems that Americans are dealing with (or ignoring) the poor exchange rate for Euro. Our dollar, which was once at $0.85 for E1.00 is now at about $1.27 or $1.28. It’s been over $1.30 before, which is not good for travelers, but we seem to go anyway!
My ticket cost $976, which is a pretty fair deal considering I bought it with only about a month’s lead time. And about $33 of that is Orbitz services fees … paper ticket shipping … etc. I see that people getting tickets for this summer are paying about $1,300 (on average) as the minimum for an economy ticket. If someone wanted to join me today, they would pay $2,000+ for a last minute ticket. Booking early pays (or saves, as the case may be). And forget about using frequent flyer points – unless you’re prepared to use 100,000 or more for a ticket (the “go anytime” kind of thing). Frequent flyer programs are a huge scam, in my humble opinion. There’s about (1) one seat available for frequent flyer point use on any one flight, and it seems to always be taken! Just another way the airlines have demonstrated poor customer service and poor business management, which is why they’re all in bankruptcy. Sure, I realize gas prices are up, etc., etc., but why are they the only industry hurting so badly from it? Why? Because their management teams are incompetent. I’ll do a rant blog on this sometime soon.
In any event, I’ll chronicle here my trip, and hopefully have some entertaining and informative material for you.
BTW, if anyone has anything that they’d like me to pay particular interest to, or write about as a topic, please let me know. You can send me a “comment” here, which I have to moderate before posting to the world. Also, let me know whether you want the question or topic posted, or whether you want me to keep it personal.
You can also go to the Italian Real Estate Assist web site:
http://italianrealestateassist.com
… and send me an e-mail via the “Contact Us” page, where you’ll find an information request e-mail address.
Ciao … Mark (o Marco)
Internet and digital TV are supposed to be ready as well – from FASTWEB. Hopefully ADSL works better in Italy than in the US. SBC (now AT&T) couldn’t get it right for weeks at our offices a few years back, so we switched to business cable Internet access.
I’m going to chronicle my trip here. It will be from the perspective of the differences, good and bad, that I notice while in Italy.
As I prepared yesterday with packing and such, my level of excitement for the trip grew. My goal is to leave in a week and have the apartment 100% inhabitable by anyone who visits, or anyone who might rent it from us. I have a renter set to be there June 1, as well as some friends who will be staying there a few nights in very late May, so this is not an option. It needs to be done.
I also need to get furniture for the terrace, which is almost as large as the apartment itself. Plus, I need to do some banking chores, insurance chores, etc. I’m sure there will be plenty of material for my blog from these tasks alone.
See about halfway down the page here:
http://www.italianrealestateassist.com/irea_picture_gallery_1.htm
… and you’ll get a good sense for the size of the terrace.
Because I travel over so frequently, I fly economy to save some dough. Flying economy is most often a drag, because it’s hard to get into a comfortable position to sleep. I’ve found a new “device” to help with this, so I’m anxious to try it out. If it works, I’ll review it here and share its benefits with you. If it doesn’t, I’ll tell you that as well!
I expect the flights will be packed. It was hard to get a ticket at all, and impossible to get a cheap ticket. Frequent flyer ticket? Ha ha … that’s a joke.
It appears that Americans are going to Italy this spring and summer. It looks like foreign travel has recovered very nicely in the post-9/11 era. It also seems that Americans are dealing with (or ignoring) the poor exchange rate for Euro. Our dollar, which was once at $0.85 for E1.00 is now at about $1.27 or $1.28. It’s been over $1.30 before, which is not good for travelers, but we seem to go anyway!
My ticket cost $976, which is a pretty fair deal considering I bought it with only about a month’s lead time. And about $33 of that is Orbitz services fees … paper ticket shipping … etc. I see that people getting tickets for this summer are paying about $1,300 (on average) as the minimum for an economy ticket. If someone wanted to join me today, they would pay $2,000+ for a last minute ticket. Booking early pays (or saves, as the case may be). And forget about using frequent flyer points – unless you’re prepared to use 100,000 or more for a ticket (the “go anytime” kind of thing). Frequent flyer programs are a huge scam, in my humble opinion. There’s about (1) one seat available for frequent flyer point use on any one flight, and it seems to always be taken! Just another way the airlines have demonstrated poor customer service and poor business management, which is why they’re all in bankruptcy. Sure, I realize gas prices are up, etc., etc., but why are they the only industry hurting so badly from it? Why? Because their management teams are incompetent. I’ll do a rant blog on this sometime soon.
In any event, I’ll chronicle here my trip, and hopefully have some entertaining and informative material for you.
BTW, if anyone has anything that they’d like me to pay particular interest to, or write about as a topic, please let me know. You can send me a “comment” here, which I have to moderate before posting to the world. Also, let me know whether you want the question or topic posted, or whether you want me to keep it personal.
You can also go to the Italian Real Estate Assist web site:
http://italianrealestateassist.com
… and send me an e-mail via the “Contact Us” page, where you’ll find an information request e-mail address.
Ciao … Mark (o Marco)
posted by Mark Pukita | 7:04 AM
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