My 7 Links Project

(My New View)

Greetings!  I'm back blogging on The Espresso Break for a special occasion.  The fabulous blogger Diana at Il Terrazzo Italiano nominated me to participate in "My 7 Links Project" and since there are so many wonderful bloggers out in Italy, I thought I'd come on board and partake in the festivities.

The five great blogs I'm nominating are:
Dim Sum, Bagels, and Crawfish:  A Jewish, Cajun, Taiwanese, American Family living in Sicily.  This is one of my most enjoyable blog discoveries.

andiamotrips:  Karen is a blogging wine expert who has lived in Naples for 16 years and knows the ins-and-outs of places to drink exceptional wine.

Italy Tutto: takes great care in nurturing, cultivating, and cherishing the Italy blogging world through its posts.

Lost In Sicily: This is another blog about Sicily with lots of great information, especially about traveling with the kiddo's.

The Shock Of The Old:  An amazing photographer, Karen is an art and architecture buff who presents amazing posts from southern Italy.

So back to my 7 Links:
1)  My Most Beautiful Post:  In Campania, hands down, the first place everyone must visit also happens to have the best preserved archeological ruins in the world.  (No exaggeration.)  I visited many times and created a post called Pompeii:  A Virtual Tour

2)  My Most Popular Post:  The Neapolitan Flip-Over Coffee Pot is the winner, which makes me laugh.  When you write a blog called 'The Espresso Break,' how apropros is that?

3)  My Most Controversial Post:  Okay, truth be told -- and it's always hard to talk about this because I love Naples and Neapolitans so very much -- but my father is Polish, so I look Slavic.  As a consequence, I was often treated like the Slavic prostitute.  What's more, a few of my African-American friends confided in me that their experience as a black person living in Campania often was very difficult.  Hence, I took an interest in the topics of ethnocentrism and racism.  My most controversial post was Attacks in Rosarno.

4)  My Most Helpful Post:  A Few Travel Tips that explains why the city looks so dirty, how to deal with traffic, safety issues, and some other hints on how to get accustomed to living specifically in the Naples region.

5)  A Post Whose Success Surprised Me:  Where To See Caravaggio in Naples.  I didn't know there were so many fans of this artist out there!

6)  A Post I feel didn't got the attention it deserved:  Coffee-Pots, Children's Workshops, and Modern Art in Naples.  An amazing professor emertius who devoted his life to bringing art to children in the poor districts of Naples, Professor Dalisi has a large milieu of modern artists working at his studio, he won the Golden Compass for his Alessi rendition of the Neapolitan Flip-Over Coffee Pot, and he is an all-around kind and accessible man.

7)  The Post I'm Most Proud Of:  Southern Albania.  After being told many times from people of many different cultures -- "don't go there, they'll steal your children" -- I still hopped on the ferry from Bari to Durres, Albania with my three children.  There, I discovered a country with centuries of strong ties to Italy, amazing organic food, and modernized gems from lush beaches to well-preserved archeological ruins.  (They also have their own children, so they don't need yours.)  Albania today deserves a high rank on the list of "Places To See In the Mediterranean."  It is also a country I'd love to live in next!

Thanks to everyone who has visited my blog and also to so many fantastic bloggers out there.  A few tidbits about what I'm doing now:

In June 2011 Eyewitness Travel released the latest edition of Naples & The Amalfi Coast for which I am listed as a writing and photo contributor.  

I have also written my own insider's travel guidebook called:  The Espresso Break:  Tours and Nooks of Naples, Italy And Beyond.  I'm hoping for a January 2011 release of the book on Amazon.com!

Also, I am now living on the 'Other Mediterranean Coast," where in January 2012 I hope to launch THE CALIFORNIA HIPPIE TRAIL:  A gathering of modern-day hippies for travel, food, home-improvement, and ideas for changing our geo-local worlds.

So stay tuned and thanks for reading!