If it’s Friday, it must be Mantua. The potential downside with a tour the likes of the one I am presently engaged in is that it IS a tour: we climb on a bus and thus cocooned, we journey forth to various locations. We must adhere to the almighty schedule lest people get lost and chaos ensue. Once we arrive at a particular destination, we travel primarily as a pack with locale guides, who describe in magnificent detail the features of yet another Renaissance fresco in yet another ancient and beautiful church. We walk together, dine together, take pictures of each other while still doing our level best to absorb something of the ambience of the places we are visiting. Gratefully, the upsides of such a tour far outweigh the down. One, the people in our group are wonderful: fun, smart, and extremely diverse in life experience; I’ve no doubt that we (my wife and I) are making friends we will keep for a long time. Two, because we’re travelling by bus (and with local guides), we’re seeing the towns and landscape of the Po River valley with a detail we could never achieve on our own. Three, we’re visiting […]