First days in Italy

After a long day of travel and another long one of recovering from lack of sleep, we are participating in life again. We're in Orvieto, Italy. The medieval section is built on a volcanic outcropping - the land around it has eroded away, leaving this place with a fabulous view of the surrounding countryside.

Today we walked five miles, both within the town as we got the lay of the land as to how the city was laid out, visited its cathedral, and descended to a path that encircles the town at the base of the cliff. In his book on Italy, tour guru Rick Steves says this path is mostly level, but we found it a challenging climb in some places - and good exercise to hopefully walk off our first gelato.

Italian food is very, very good. I've learned already not to eat everything that's placed in front of me - servings are large and quality excellent, but unless I pace myself I'll outgrow every pair of pants I packed.

I'm glad I brought my laptop - way more convenient than descending to the hotel lobby to use the in-house computer. I don't want to keep a journal, then rekey it when we get home. And I find that I'm not thinking about when I'll have the chance to get to a computer. Whenever it suits me is a better arrangement.

We have 20 in our group and have learned each other's names. The usual collection of folks trying to get along, some more successfully than others. But by and large we're a congenial group.