Happy New Year !

Tantissimi auguri di Buon Anno to you all !

Our January 1 celebrations included a walk along the Servian aqueduct (41-54 A.D.), 20 minutes from city center Rome, followed by the Janiculum Hill marionette show, which on Sunday and holidays is a Roman tradition we urge everyone with small children to consider. (Nathan and Isabel have offered to provide you full details, and can recite the plots in their sleep !)  A three-sip espresso at the Hill’s bar/café comes next for the adults with an apricot juice for the children, and a few minutes later, the Janiculum Hill’s exciting noon-time canon BOOMS, followed by the sound of St. Peter’s bells and the lyricism of close to one thousand other lunch bells ringing from lesser churches spread across the city’s Seven Hills.

All over Italy, Insider’s Italy travelers are celebrating too, some now at lunch tables at restaurants where we have booked them, or out (with a lovely choice of wines and a succulent picnic) on a boat near Capri.  Some are walking in the Cinque Terre today, and another family is soaking at thermal springs in southern Tuscany.

I hope that on this first day of 2011, you will think about places in Italy where you might like to partake in your own special celebrations this year — a birthday, engagement, wedding, anniversary, graduation, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year.  It would give us greatest happiness to partner with you in planning an adventure that will exceed your expectations.

I raise my glass to you all, and with this first blog of the year come my affectionate best wishes for a very happy New Year.

Marjorie