Episode 49 - Learning Italian and Buying a Villa: Linda McCarley's Path to European Living

Travel writer Linda McCarley joins Jim and Rita to share her remarkable journey from childhood trips to Scotland through her recent decision to purchase a villa in Tuscany. Born in Canada to Scottish parents, Linda's travel adventures began at just three years old, planting seeds for a lifelong passion that would eventually lead her to Italy.

With refreshing candor, Linda reveals how her approach to travel evolved from standard tourism to meaningful cultural immersion—a shift that intensified when she became a travel writer during the pandemic. "The more we traveled, the more we did not want to be tourists," she explains, describing how writing pushed her to research destinations more deeply and seek experiences away from the crowds.

Her story of unexpectedly purchasing a 1920s villa in Barga (considered "new" by Italian standards) offers listeners a glimpse into the realities of overseas property ownership, complete with bureaucratic delays and renovation plans. Linda's recent five-week language immersion in Lucca provides practical insights for anyone considering similar adventures—from the moment she began thinking in Italian to participating in cultural excursions that included Carnival celebrations and food outings.

Throughout our conversation, Linda shares genuine recommendations for lesser-known Italian destinations like Arezzo and Camogli that offer authentic experiences away from tourist crowds. Her description of walking ancient streets where buildings predate the founding of America reminds us why European travel continues to captivate our imaginations.

Whether you're dreaming of your own Italian villa, planning extended travel abroad, or simply looking to experience destinations more authentically, Linda's story offers both inspiration and practical wisdom. Follow her journey at lindagotravelwriter.com and let her experiences guide your next travel adventure.

Website - https://lindagotravelwriter.com

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lindafunaymccarley/

Chapters

• 0:09 Introducing Season Two Plans
• 1:01 Meeting Travel Writer Linda McCarley
• 2:10 Navigating Italian Real Estate
• 5:50 From Tourist to Traveler
• 9:05 Lucca Language School Experience
• 15:39 Discovering Hidden Italian Treasures
• 19:37 Unexpected Villa Purchase
• 28:36 Episode Wrap-up and Resources

Transcript

Jim Santos: 0:09

Welcome to Travels with Jim and Rita. I'm your host, jim Santos, along with my wife, rita. And welcome to the second season of our podcast. In the first season, we set in motion our crazy plan to outfox the real estate market in the US and actually increase our retirement nest egg by selling our home and car and spending the next three years or so living abroad and exploring the world. While we did manage to increase our net worth while we traveled, a bout of pancreatitis in Latvia caused us to return to the States for surgery and recovery and to rethink our plans in light of our ages and other factors.

Jim Santos: 0:43

Enter Plan B. We now have a home base set up in eastern Tennessee and are ready to hit the road once again. Our plans are now to spend anywhere from six to nine months a year abroad, returning to the US to visit friends, family and to recharge. Join us now as the adventure continues on Travels with Jim and Rita. Hello everybody and welcome to our podcast. As we record this episode, we're only about 30 hours away from boarding a flight to DC and then on to Portugal, so we're pretty excited and busy here, right?

Rita Santos: 1:22

Yeah, definitely.

Jim Santos: 1:24

Now, when this episode airs, we should be in Oxford, england, so we'll probably take the next episode to catch you up on how our trip's going. But for today, our guest is a travel writer who says her love of travel was ignited when she was just three years old and she's been on the move ever since. She also just returned from Lucca, italy, where she was taking a language course. For a wonderful reason, she and her husband are planning on moving there Now. Here to tell us all about it is Linda Funay McCarley. Hey, Linda, welcome to Travels with Jim and Rita.

Linda Funay McCarley: 1:53

Thanks so much, jim and Rita. Really nice getting together with you and I'm envious that you're taking off again for Europe.

Jim Santos: 2:01

Well, you just got back though.

Linda Funay McCarley: 2:02

Yeah, I know, but that doesn't matter. Well, you just got back though. Yeah, I know, but that doesn't matter.

Rita Santos: 2:06

It's never enough you know, right, yeah, when is your planned departure for moving?

Linda Funay McCarley: 2:11

Well, it's kind of up in the air right now because there are a number of factors, Number one being our house closing over there has been delayed and we're not moving, moving full time right now. That for a future, after retirement. Now it'd be our vacation home, but it should have closed last June. And I'm sure I probably don't need to tell you how things work in Italy.

Jim Santos: 2:39

You already know Well we've heard they work slowly.

Linda Funay McCarley: 2:43

Yes. So we went over there last June to close and got a notification that well, we're missing a couple of approvals from the community, so it's just delayed. Hopefully in the next month or two we will be all good to go. So we're kind of sitting and waiting for that. And then we have this thing called work. You know as well, we have to balance that right now. So, um, a, lot, of, a lot of puzzle pieces. But once we close we're planning on getting over there and, um, working on renovations and, you know, getting it ready to to use as a family and friends gathering and who knows what else.

Rita Santos: 3:30

Hey Linda, are you using an attorney to help you through this process?

Linda Funay McCarley: 3:36

Well, for the house purchase specifically, we're using a notario, which is almost like an attorney over here in Italy.

Linda Funay McCarley: 3:44

So he's working through all that and our seller has been great. It's actually a foundation. The villa next door to us in this town is a retirement villa actually, and it's run by a group, a nonprofit group. So we're not buying from a family, we're buying from a group that's half American, half Italian, so that process was very smooth. It's just the other parts so. But as far as the transitioning over the years to, to you know, any status changes in Italy, we actually have looked at a group that talks about residency and other things and citizenship, and my great grandfather was born in Italy. So I actually have been researching that because that'll be helpful down the road. But also international living has helped greatly with that. Once we knew we were interested in Italy and Europe in general and, more than being a tourist or traveler, we subscribed to international living. That was a few years ago now and that's also how I got my start travel writing.

Jim Santos: 5:04

That got us into trouble too.

Rita Santos: 5:07

Yeah, that's kind of what got us. We lived in South America for six years.

Jim Santos: 5:12

Yes, signed up to International Living. Before you knew it, we were living in Ecuador. Yeah, funny how that works, isn't it and I was writing for travel right.

Linda Funay McCarley: 5:21

Yeah, right, yes, oh, that's so exciting. And you were in Salinas, right, yeah, right, yes, oh, that's so exciting.

Rita Santos: 5:25

And you were in Salinas, right, right, we were, yeah, on the coast.

Linda Funay McCarley: 5:27

I was there in 1990 or 91.

Rita Santos: 5:31

Looks a bit different now. Oh yeah, I'm sure it does. Yeah, the beaches are still beautiful.

Linda Funay McCarley: 5:37

Yeah, we absolutely loved it, but it's a big world and we've enjoyed traveling too, so yeah, but it's a big world and we've enjoyed traveling too. Yeah, Ecuador is a great country. I loved it there.

Jim Santos: 5:48

Let's get back to your travel now. I was kind of intrigued. You said that you traveled when you were three years old and it had a big impact on you. I don't think I remember anything I did when I was three years old, so that must have been quite a trip.

Linda Funay McCarley: 6:01

Well, that actually, yes, started my travel journey because both my parents were born in Scotland and they immigrated to Canada, where I was born, after the war, world War II, 1952. And then my two brothers were born in Scotland and my sister and I came after that. They both left very big families. So that was my first trip over there to see my aunties and uncles and all my parents, family, my cousins and everything, and they just started going every other year back to Scotland and then our relatives would come and visit us every other year. So I really grew up feeling like I kind of had two homes One was in the Toronto area and one was in Scotland, because that's where our extended family all was. So I just felt like travel was in my blood from there on in. And my dad my dad was quite a nomad. He was the one that started that whole ball rolling with the immigration, and then even in the in-between years he would just pack us in the car and drive to Florida or Myrtle Beach or somewhere. We didn't have a lot, but he made sure we had enough to travel. That was the important thing and I'm glad he did that. No, I wasn't.

Linda Funay McCarley: 7:24

I've always been kind of creative. I have a background in interior design, so side career, I guess you could say. But I didn't know I was a writer until I started researching it and looking at it. And COVID really was when I pivoted, just like a lot of people, looking around to see what I could do. I was in interior design but business development manager at the time when COVID hit and it was a small company and half my job was networking at events, trade events, so you know where that went.

Linda Funay McCarley: 8:00

So I had to look around and see what else that I was passionate about. And travel was always there and I had kind of thought about writing for a long time and just never had the time to do it with everything else I had going on. So I I found the Great Escape Publishing course and that I had wanted to do it in person. I had seen it for the last couple of years and I kept thinking about it and so I did the online version of that during COVID and that really got me started, did my first submission and it was about Italy, actually the first homework we had after that course. Then I through the Travel Writers University that was an offshoot of that and Travel Writers Cafe. I attended more conferences and retreats and, you know, worked on honing my writing skills and just got more and more excited about it from there.

Rita Santos: 8:57

Hey, have you ever thought about citizenship in Scotland? That seems to me like that would be so easy for you.

Linda Funay McCarley: 9:06

Yes, I did. When we were working with the group that was helping us figure it all out. They talked about the British citizenship, because that's an easy one for me, but then Brexit happened.

Jim Santos: 9:20

Yeah, I was going to say UK isn't in EU anymore.

Linda Funay McCarley: 9:23

Nope right.

Jim Santos: 9:24

So you kind of lose that advantage.

Rita Santos: 9:26

Okay, okay, so that wouldn't allow you then to live in Italy without a residency permit?

Linda Funay McCarley: 9:34

No, they became just like us, the whole 90-day, 180-day rule.

Rita Santos: 9:41

Man, that's unfortunate, isn't it? Yeah?

Linda Funay McCarley: 9:44

I had a cousin who was, you know, trying to go to Spain and retire in Spain right when all that was happening. So it was unfortunate for him too. So I've seen a lot of people change their path with that change.

Jim Santos: 9:59

Have you seen your style of travel change as you became a writer? As you became a writer?

Linda Funay McCarley: 10:05

Absolutely. Maybe even a little bit before that, but definitely with the writing. Also, we had gone from at some point I can't remember exactly when it was, but it seemed the more and more we traveled, the more and more we did not want to be tourists.

Rita Santos: 10:22

Exactly.

Linda Funay McCarley: 10:26

And also wanted to be more in tune with the community of places we went it just I felt, like you know, as a traveler, I felt like we were looking in the window at a culture and that wasn't enough for me, and my husband started feeling the same way too. And, yes, the writing, doing more research about the destinations we were at made me really want to be more off the path, away from the, the mass tourism type destinations, and, and once we started making connections in those places, it was just changed forever for us yeah, I've noticed that.

Jim Santos: 11:02

Uh, one of the things that we like when we travel is we don't over plan.

Rita Santos: 11:07

Right.

Jim Santos: 11:17

That drives some people crazy.

Linda Funay McCarley: 11:17

I know, but we don't really have a clear idea of exactly what we're going to do anytime we go out. Well, I like to do. I am a planner when it comes to travel, but I'm like you, I don't like to plan everything. I like to do a framework that allows us to be spontaneous, if that makes sense, yeah that's what we've done, basically. Because anytime we come home from a trip and say, oh my gosh, what was your favorite? Oh, the favorite thing was it's always an experience that we didn't plan.

Rita Santos: 11:43

Right.

Linda Funay McCarley: 11:44

Yeah, always Something that surprised us people that we met during the surprise that led to other great things. So, yeah, I'm with you on that one. So do you try to seek out the off the beaten path places? Yes, definitely. When we start hearing a lot about a destination, we say, ok, let's find another one that people aren't talking about so much, and that's how we found so where we ended up settling on as far as buying a home and thinking about the future, that kind of came to us. It's definitely off the path, but that came because of my family connection, also with my great-grandfather being born in Northern Tuscany and 2005,.

Linda Funay McCarley: 12:34

My dad took my sister and me on an Italy trip to. He wanted to see he was 80 at the time and he really wanted to come full circle on his ancestry and we never would have even heard about this town otherwise. So we went to Barga and I brought my husband back there in 2014. And that kind of started us going in that direction. But, for example, just about off the beaten path other spots we booked a rental house there for six weeks back in 2022 I guess that was, and that was the longest we had gone, um, on a trip we were switching over to the apartments and and all of that, rather than hotels and shorter, shorter periods, and we found the little town of camogli.

Linda Funay McCarley: 13:25

We were looking because barga is about an hour and a half from the Italian Riviera. We didn't want to do Cinque Terre because it's so overpopulated. Same with Portofino it's just too glamorous maybe for us. We weren't sure, so we found this little place called Camogli and the owner of our rental house was from England and Genoa, so she knew it well and we fell in love with that because it was more any tourists there were, more European or local, and it was in November, so it was off-season, but the weather was great and the seafood was great and it just had this magical ambiance and that one of so I it's a place that I wanted to write about is that near siena?

Linda Funay McCarley: 14:12

no, this is on the italian riviera. So if you went up, it's in laguria. So if you went past the cinque terra and uh went past portofino, where all the yachts are and the celebrities go, it's about 30 minutes west of Portofino, right between Portofino and Genoa.

Jim Santos: 14:32

Yeah, we went to Positano on the Italian coast.

Rita Santos: 14:36

The Amalfi.

Jim Santos: 14:37

Oh, down the Amalfi Coast. The Amalfi Coast, yeah, that was a beautiful area too.

Rita Santos: 14:41

Yeah we traveled, that that was 2011. Yeah, a long time ago.

Linda Funay McCarley: 14:45

Oh, we were down there in 2014. That's actually where we got engaged. My husband proposed to me in Sorrento.

Jim Santos: 14:53

Oh, that's nice yeah.

Linda Funay McCarley: 14:55

Kind of serendipitous, we're ending up in Italy. Yes, yeah, did you go to Sorrento when?

Rita Santos: 15:01

you were there. No, we were in Amalfi, Positano, Rivella.

Jim Santos: 15:07

Capri, Capri, Rivella Capri.

Rita Santos: 15:08

Capri went to the hour of Capri.

Jim Santos: 15:10

Yeah, and of course went to see Pompeii.

Linda Funay McCarley: 15:13

Oh, that's beautiful, isn't it? Yeah?

Jim Santos: 15:16

And I spent some time in Florence also and finished up in Rome.

Linda Funay McCarley: 15:19

Yeah, Wonderful Again. It's a tourist thing, but we got lucky. At the end of COVID we took my daughter and her partner over Christmas to January 22, 23. And they hadn't been forced to Italy. So we went to Rome, Florence and Arezzo. We stayed in Arezzo and both Rome and Florence were wonderful. There was hardly any people there, and my daughter and her partner were saying we want to move here. I said, okay, just a caveat, You're not going to see it again.

Rita Santos: 15:55

No, Rome is so busy. But Florence is probably one of our favorite cities.

Jim Santos: 16:01

Yeah, and when we went, this was before Airbnbs and a lot of the tools on the Internet. Now we actually used Craigslist.

Rita Santos: 16:09

Yeah, oh, wow.

Jim Santos: 16:10

The only place we stayed in a hotel was Rome for a few days.

Rita Santos: 16:13

Right.

Jim Santos: 16:14

But in Florence and Positano we found apartments that we could rent. So in Florence we were in a nice little neighborhood. You know where you. You go out and there's the butcher and the baker and the wine shop and the coffee shop and the candlestick maker.

Rita Santos: 16:28

Yeah, and get in your bread.

Jim Santos: 16:30

So so it was a very um, you felt like you were part of the neighborhood. Yeah, rather than coming in and out of a hotel all the time that's exactly what we look for now.

Linda Funay McCarley: 16:39

We like, we like the walkable village thing. You know from the blues, after reading the blue zone book I was I just kept saying to my husband walkable village, that's where we need to end up and where we like to stay also.

Jim Santos: 16:55

Well, tell us about this language school that you went to in Lucca. How long of a course was that?

Linda Funay McCarley: 17:02

Well, it depends on the person. They start every week and I loved it. It was wonderful. Lucca is a fabulous city, again in its high season. It's getting busier now, but in February it was mostly local.

Linda Funay McCarley: 17:20

I hardly heard any English spoken, which was perfect for what I was doing. Right, I found a little apartment and we were both going to go, but my husband had work responsibilities, so he came at the end of it and I said I want to learn. I was refreshing my Italian. I studied foreign languages in university, so it's been a couple of years, and I lived in Texas for 23 years, so I didn't really get a whole lot of practice. So I wanted to learn it for a few reasons. Number one, for the obvious one, because we'll be spending a lot more time there and also renovating and need to speak to contractors and their language would be better. So I had gone to Luca Italian school last year, when we were there for 10 days, and so I only had a week there and it felt like I just dipped my toe in. So I said this year I work for a major airline and they offer leaves for up to three months every winter, so I took the leave and said this is what I'm going to do with it.

Linda Funay McCarley: 18:26

So I was in the school for five weeks. I did four weeks of group classes and then my husband came that last week, so I didn't want to be gone. You know, nine till one every day. So I just did some private lessons the last week and I learned a lot. And the great thing about it was I'm it's all in Italian, so you're really getting that immersion. But there are so many expats there that it's great for meeting people in your language too.

Linda Funay McCarley: 18:57

From everywhere a lot of Americans, but you know all parts of Europe and other places as well, australia also, and they do cultural events every week, three afternoons a week. You get to choose to do an outing of some sort, and one of the ones we did was in Carnival Carnivale on the Riviera, where it's a famous location. Viareggio is the town they do this big carnival during our Mardi Gras, I guess you would say. All these floats, and completely different from what we do here for parades, very kind of satirical humor, political humor. It was really interesting to see so that and food outings and all kinds of cultural outings. It was just a fabulous experience. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in doing that.

Jim Santos: 19:52

So this wasn't just classroom time.

Linda Funay McCarley: 19:55

No, you could just do classroom time. We were at school from 9.15 until 1. We had a 30-minute break, of course, for coffee you can't do that without coffee in Italy, right. And then that left the afternoons free for the outings that they organized. One of them was just a musical concert by two of our teachers there, and they gave us the words and printed out and so we could follow along and you know kind of understand what the music was about. So it was really enriching, not just from a learning and speaking the language perspective, but culturally, very big culturally. It was all encompassing, I would say.

Jim Santos: 20:42

Yeah, I think to appreciate a culture really helps to know at least some of the language.

Linda Funay McCarley: 20:48

Yeah, I strongly feel that way. I felt like by the time the four weeks came around with the group classes, I was waking up in the morning and starting to think in Italian, and that was a big deal for me. The talking is always the last thing. Right, I understand a lot of Italian, the, the writing, it's. It's pretty easy, but it's you know the grammar, trying to put it all in place and be confident. And then I was able to tell jokes in class or understand a joke, and they say that's another good indication that's a big step.

Linda Funay McCarley: 21:20

Yeah, yeah, and that's for me, you know, when you can't be humorous than the where you are, when you're meeting people. It it just feels like that's your next step to feeling more at home in a place spending a lot of time.

Jim Santos: 21:36

Yeah, I felt like I was finally getting a grasp of Spanish when I managed to win an argument at the bank.

Linda Funay McCarley: 21:40

Yeah, oh, definitely.

Jim Santos: 21:43

That was a big deal.

Linda Funay McCarley: 21:45

That's a definite indicator.

Jim Santos: 21:47

Right Now. I imagine working for an airline helps you keep the travel expenses down a bit, doesn't it?

Linda Funay McCarley: 21:53

Yes to a point. I did that years ago while I was going to college, actually back in Canada, and it was different back then. Now airlines operate a lot more tightly and with a lot of full flights, so it's less Opportunity to fly standby Like that, if that's what you're Referring to. But you know we can still do Confirmed seats for Discount, so that does help in that way. That's good. Going overseas on standby is just Kind of hard to do, with my husband Not being an employee. You just take your chance, so it's hit and miss. But I get layovers over there so I'm happy about that. Yeah, that's cool.

Jim Santos: 22:37

Yeah, that's not bad. You get to sample a lot more places.

Linda Funay McCarley: 22:41

Yes, exactly, exactly.

Jim Santos: 22:44

What are some of the places that you've visited that you really enjoyed writing about most?

Linda Funay McCarley: 22:49

I'd say most of my focus has been on Italy, because that's just where we've traveled the most in the last few years and also what we're both passionate about. One of the cities that I wrote about that we really liked also and considered settling in was Arezzo, also in Tuscany. It's a city of about 100,000 people but it's really under the radar, I'm not sure why. And it's about an hour from Florence, about maybe two from Rome, kind of makes the triangle there and Cortona, not that far to the west either, fabulous for Renaissance art art. They have something called the piero de la francesca trail. He's a famous renaissance painter that was born in the area and there's so many examples of his work there.

Linda Funay McCarley: 23:41

I'm you I'm sure you're probably familiar with the way you travel, but I didn't know much about art until I started travel, writing and really doing more research into all the things each place was known for, and that's what I my takeaway was from Arezzo and the whole area surrounding it, all the little towns was just the history and the art history and events surrounding medieval occurrences. They have a joust in Arezzo as well, twice a year, june and September. It's like taking the Palio in Siena. You know the horse races around the main square.

Linda Funay McCarley: 24:23

But instead of racing the horses, I feel it's a little kinder to the animals. Racing the horses, I feel it's a little kinder to the animals, but instead of racing the horses, they go one at a time and they're trying to hit a target. That's like a dummy horse, and the one that hits closest to the target, their quartiere, just like they have in Siena they win the prize at the end, the middle at the end.

Rita Santos: 24:47

I've been in that plaza, but I don't think I could watch that horse race. I think that? Yeah, that's kind of hard.

Linda Funay McCarley: 24:56

Yeah, I think that would make me anxious worrying about the horses.

Rita Santos: 24:58

Me too yeah.

Linda Funay McCarley: 25:00

This one seems I could do that one and that's on my list of being there when the next joust happens. I'd love to go back in September and see that one. In Arezzo it's a lot of everybody dresses up in costume medieval period costume and they have all kinds of things surrounding it, other events surrounding the whole thing. Plus, arezzo has the largest antiques fair in all of Italy. So, yeah, I'll be looking for, uh, some things for the for the house in Barga.

Jim Santos: 25:37

Yeah, it sounds like an exciting project. Uh, you said it's basically just the foundation. Now that you're working up from that.

Linda Funay McCarley: 25:43

No, no, it's a, it's a full on villa that we bought, but we are going to be doing renovations because it wasn't used for a while. And you may know this already in Italy people take their kitchens with them when they're gone, which works for us because we don't have to demo anything if it wasn't suitable. We were actually looking for an apartment. We thought, you know, one or two bedroom apartment perfect, you know just what we need, maybe right on the edge of town, so we can not worry about the parking situation but still be convenient to our little bakery and all of that. And then we were back and forth no, let's just rent. Okay, let's buy. Okay, let's rent.

Linda Funay McCarley: 26:29

So we looked I'm sure you can relate to some of this we looked over the last five years, I guess, and just kind of kept our eyes open but didn't buy anything. And then last year, when we were there, our friend who we had rented from for the six weeks the previous year said you know, there's a house up the street from me for sale if you just want to look. So we went to look at that and I said to my husband well, it wasn't quite what we were looking for, but maybe we should just call our realtor we had worked with and see what the comparisons are, just so we know what the price range is now, compared to four years ago when we last looked, and somehow we ended up buying a villa that day.

Rita Santos: 27:16

That sounds like Jim and I. Quite frankly, it's scary Really yeah.

Jim Santos: 27:21

Well, you know the problems. The travelers complain it's the more you see, the more you want to see.

Rita Santos: 27:26

That's it.

Linda Funay McCarley: 27:27

That's true, that's true. It's the more you see, the more you want to see.

Jim Santos: 27:28

That's it, that's true, that's true, you mentioned the art and the art history there. To me, that's the art and the architecture of. Europe is probably the biggest draw, because I think Americans understand how old Europe is yeah, they don't.

Rita Santos: 27:47

I know they don't.

Linda Funay McCarley: 27:49

I know old you're this. Yeah, they don't, I know they don't, I know I.

Rita Santos: 27:55

It's when we were buying our villa. It was from the 1920s and to them that's like, oh yeah, the newer, the newer house.

Linda Funay McCarley: 27:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's actually considered there. You know how, on the hilltop towns in tuscany and some of the areas in italy, you have the, you have the old medieval town. We are considered being in the new town in Barga, where we bought our home, because the old part it's a hilltop town and how those medieval towns work, you know, with the walls surrounding the original town, and then they have the new town just outside or below that. Well, because the houses inside Varga, his home, is in the new town.

Jim Santos: 28:39

Yeah, we were eating in a little restaurant in I think it was in Warsaw in Poland, and saw a plaque on the door that this restaurant had been operating since about a hundred years before the United States existed.

Linda Funay McCarley: 28:52

Yeah, that that is crazy. And when you're looking at um architecture and just furniture, anything it's like 1600 is yeah, yeah, it's an antique. We even have that here in the U? S. If you find a piece of piece of furniture from the 60s, you're probably in Boston right.

Linda Funay McCarley: 29:16

Yeah, I'm always amazed and every time I go back to Europe, and especially Italy, just walking around rome, when you can walk down a block and come across ancient building after ancient building, it's just I just can't stop looking at things and taking pictures, things it's mind-blowing, it is it is the. I thought it was just the interior designer in me, but it's not. It's just amazing, I think, to everyone who goes there. If you just look and walk and look and walk, there's so much to see.

Jim Santos: 29:58

Well, we've been talking with travel writer and future resident of Italy, Linda Fonea McCarley. Now you can check out her website at lindagotravelwritercom, and you'll find a link to that site and her Instagram in the show notes. Linda, thanks for taking the time to share with us and we wish you buena fortuna.

Linda Funay McCarley: 30:16

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking to you too, ciao you've been listening to travels with jim and rita.

Jim Santos: 30:36

if you'd like to read more about where we've been, see some photos of the places you've been hearing about, check out our blog at jimsantosbookscom and our youtube channel and instagram for videos. Meanwhile, you can access my books, audiobooks and short stories at jimsantosnet and there there are links to those sites Instagram, youtube and so on in the show notes. We'd love to hear from our listeners as well, so if you have a question or a topic you'd like us to cover, or you want to tell your own travel story, email us at jim at jimsantosbookscom. Until next time, remember we travel not to escape life, but so that life does not escape us.