Preface

Our idea to come abroad for an extended stay came about a year ago, as we were eating Dino’s subs for dinner at Paul Revere Park in the North End.  Since neither of us studied abroad in college, we suddenly had a burning desire to live in Europe, travel, and learn a new language.  We tossed around a few ideas…one included living and studying abroad in Rome for a year so Joe could earn his Master’s, while I taught English, and we both learned Italian.  Somewhere in the conversation, though, we were brought back to reality and realized that it would be far too difficult to keep our house in Quincy AND live abroad.  

Our plan instead: continue to work and live in Quincy, but travel to Europe as much as possible, and stay for longer stints. It was that night last year when we decided that we would travel to Europe for our first extended stay.  Our original plan was to visit just Italy, but once we started planning, we couldn’t resist stopping in other countries nearby.