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It was recommended that I write every day.  I am not sure I have enough to say that often but let's just see if the every day thing works.  I definitely do not want this blog to turn into a diary thing, where I chat about what I did today, like "how I spent my summer vacation."  Please, please all of you out there, when/if it gets to that point, tell me.  Save me the embarrassing revelation that somehow I turned into a boring shrew.

Movie review:  the current Harry Potter film, "Deathly Hallows".  I didn't read many of the HP books and did not read the last book, on which this movie is based. Therefore I cannot tell you if it follows the book or if it even remotely resembles the story in the book. I can tell you that it is a very good movie.  Amazing visual effects, good story even if you have no idea of what is going on, story-wise. (That would be me.) It's a good way to spend two plus hours, pure fantasy and escapism.   Two thumbs up. 

Rick Steves:  he is on the PBS channel right now.  I really, really do not like this man.  How can anyone stand to listen to him?  His voice sounds like an elementary school teacher swaddled in cotton and sugar with a side of pedophile thrown in. (Harsh, yes, but he creeps me out.)   He tries to make foreign travel easy and fun and something that everyone can do.  But anyone who has ever visited a foreign country knows that it is not always as easy as Steves makes it seem.  In fact, real travel, not group tourist travel on a bus, can be hard work. Those colorful local folks that Steves always finds sitting outside a cafe, willing to chat, are hardly ever accessible to the rest of us. Those rolling suitcases he always finds easy to maneuver do not work so well on the cobblestone streets of many old cities.  Not everyone speaks English, unlike the people he connects with. Hotel rooms are small, bathrooms are often shared, food choices are limited, especially in off-season.  This is not to say that traveling is terribly difficult, it is simply that Steves makes it seem so easy all the time.  I had all my money and my passport stolen on a train in Italy and yet that experience, with the carabinieri and the American Embassy, was one of the most educational experiences of my travel life. Rick Steves doesn't discuss those kinds of things, he just tries to make it all seem pretty and nice.  

Well, enough about Rick Steves.  Thanks for listening.