Italy?

The news this week is that we've added a new country to our destinations: Italy! We had previously decided to skip all the southern European areas because Les abhors hot weather. But I read about a one-week Esperanto conference just held in Fai della Paganella, northern Italy, and it sounded great. There were 223 attendees, half from Italy and half from 25 other countries—but none from the US. They did fun excursions like mushroom hunting in the hills. They had a lot of music and dancing. A Japanese woman did a class all week in the use of the soroban (Japanese abacus). All this, of course, among the regular classes and talks.

San Benedetto del Tronto

Next year's meeting will be in San Benedetto del Tronto on the Adriatic Sea. Les was not on-board with this when I first told him, because of the heat factor. But I've been looking up air-conditioned hotels in that town, in case the conference pensiones don't have it, and Les is recalling that we enjoyed the conference in Yokohama despite the humid heat there. So I have hope that he'll come around, and meantime I'll "pencil it in" (figuratively) on my itinerary spreadsheet for the end of August.

As always, I have no desire to see any other parts of Italy if we go. My focus continues to be "Esperantujo" rather than sightseeing. We would just bop down for the one week, then head back north to the coolth.