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New Basilicata Travel Guide

Valerie

100+ Posts
Shameless promotional message - my long-in-the-works travel guide to Basilicata has finally been published. {squeal}
Pauline has been reading an advance copy and will surely comment on its value (or shortcomings) but wanted to "throw it out there" and let my travel community know about my big news. :) :cool:
You can find 52 Things to See and Do in Basilicata on Amazon (print and Kindle) and for Apple or Nook devices on Smashwords.
Grazie a tutti!
 
Congratulations on the fruition of your efforts, Valerie. Having looked at your Bella Basilicata website, I'm sure people will enjoy the book as it is clear you know the region intimately. I'd love to visit the area one day.
What's the situation there now regarding Covid? Any tourists?
 
Thanks, Joe. No tourists. We are zona arancione so we're not supposed to move around except for work, medical or other approved reasons. I don't think there are any tourists arriving anywhere in Italy these days. Hopefully in the Spring things will be stable. Fingers crossed!
 
This is a great travel guide for a relatively undiscovered region of Italy. Basilicata is like Tuscany 30 years ago. Valerie and Bryan have been living there for 10 years and they really know the area. The book is very informative and I love the way it is divided into “52 Things to Do”. Read through it and pick out the sights you want to see.

Congratulations Valerie!

Here are the Amazon links (Paperback and Kindle):


 
Pauline, I'm glad you moved the thread here, I've never been in the book forum. I do read, but I just never even saw that section. Ironically we were supposed to be in Puglia this Christmas. When we told friends back in January, two other couples wanted to go, so we changed the destination to Rome. Obviously that plan is moot.

For 2021 we have our fingers crossed that we can do a 3 week trip to northern Italy and Switzerland. The trip is planned and paid for. So we probably won't go back to Italy again until 2022, unless we plan a 2021 Christmas trip. Whenever we do the Puglia trip since we will be in the neighborhood, I want to visit Basilicata.

I read most of my books (non-fiction only please) that I borrow online from my library. However, when we travel I prefer a hard copy book to be with me. I've taken numerous editions from Rick Steves. I had to make an exception for Fred Plotkin's book Italy for the Gourmet Traveler, at 796 pages and 3 lbs. I had to leave it at home.

So here's my big question. Is the hard copy book easy enough to tote on a 3 week trip or should I get the online version? I'm getting it from my wife as a stocking stuffer, so I just have to let her know to get the online version or a hard copy.
 
I got my stocking stuffer today and couldn't wait until Christmas!

Basilicata book.jpg
 
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Oh, I'm excited to read this! I've just sent the link to my daughters with a hint that it would be a fab Christmas gift for their mother. I definitely want to get back to this region for a second visit. My first time was three weeks but still not nearly long enough.
 
Valerie the book has already been worth every penny just 5 pages in. My mother's parents came from Giovinazzo and my father's from Terlizzi. And the pasta my grandmother and mother made I never knew how it was spelled but we called it STRESH-IN-ATE. However, no Italian I spoke with ever heard of it.

On page 5 you mentioned the pastas and one was strascinati. Well that's it! I don't know if it is the case in Basilicata, but at least in the Bari area the dialect was to leave off the last vowel (I could tell a few funny stories about that practice). So it makes sense when they came here they pronounced strascinati like STRESH-IN-ATE!

It may sound stupid but the origin of the name we had for that pasta has bugged me for decades and now I know. :)
 
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Valerie the book has already been worth every penny just 5 pages in. My mother's parents came from Giovinazzo and my father's from Terlizzi. And the pasta my grandmother and mother made I never knew how it was spelled but we called it STRESH-IN-ATE. However, no Italian I spoke with ever heard of it.

On page 5 you mentioned the pastas and one was strascinati. Well that's it! I don't know if it is the case in Basilicata, but at least in the Bari area the dialect was to leave off the last vowel (I could tell a few funny stories about that practice). So it makes sense when they came here they pronounced strascinati like STRESH-IN-ATE!

It may sound stupid but the origin of the name we had for that pasta has bugged me for decades and now I know. :)

I'm so glad! :dancingcow: Yes, they tend to lop off the final vowel in these parts, so it would often be pronounced stra-shee-NAHT. You will definitely have to make it to your ancestral towns on your next trip!

Happy you are enjoying the book! (When you're finished, if you could take a minute to write a few lines about it on Amazon (or wherever you purchased), a review would be so appreciated. They help boost attention and credibility. :shamefullyembarrassed:)
 
Will do (it was purchased on Amazon). Our family pronunciation was more like stresh-shin-NATE.

And btw, it is exactly the size of most of Rick Steves travel guides. I'm glad I got the hard copy because this will be easy enough to tote along. I usually get all my books online to read on a tablet, but for a travel book where I'm always jumping around to different sections, a hard copy is much easier to navigate.
 
I agree, I prefer a print book. I like to turn down pages, underline, write in margins, flip back and forth to refer to things more easily. So glad you like it! :)
 

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