Ciao everyone!

I hope everyone is having a great year so far.

My Visit to an Agriturismo that Makes Wine

I had the extreme pleasure of visting an agriturismo during my last trip to Italy.  This one has a wine-making facility and I was able to get a "behind the scenes" look at how Sicilian wine is produced.

Click here to see about my Sicilian wine-making lesson.

Current Airline Prices to Italy

If you are planning a trip to Italy soon here is how some of the prices are falling into place. I did a price comparison of flights from John F. Kennedy (JFK) in New York to Rome's Fiumicino (FCO) airport. The criteria I used was from various times leaving on a Tuesday and returning the following Sunday. This gives you a little more than 10 days of vacation figuring many people would want to travel under these parameters.

I pulled prices from Expedia.com about 2 weeks ago and just recently to see how they are moving.
The chart below shows that the closer time-frame (April 1) prices actually went down a bit. My guess is that there are some unsold seats that they want to promote. But you can see the prices for summer travel have gone up quite a bit. And the prices at the end came down a bit on the one-stop option from JFK to FCO. I think you'll still see prices go up as we get closer to summer so you better start booking now if you plan on going.

I'm not sure why there is such a difference between a one stop flight versus a non-stop flight.  Rome and New York are major hubs they shouldn't have to route you through Frankfurt or some other city to do this trip.  But I guess that's how the airlines will make their money.

Calling Cards to Italy

Below you will see my recent usage on using a calling card to call Italy. The one I like to use is from Walgreen's Pharmacy. Since they are all over, it is easy to walk into the drugstore and pick up a calling card. The card has Walgreen's logo and information on it but the company through which the calls are placed is called IDT.

The cost has been averaging close to 6 cents a minute. However, if you are calling a mobile number in Italy you will be charged a lot more. You can tell if it's a mobile number for Italy if it's a 10-digit number and it starts with a 3. I'll be scouting for better options in the future and I'll let you know what I come up with.

A la prossima! Until next time!

Larry Aiello