From now on we are together, and always will be. I look at you, and in your grinning, ebullient eyes I see my eternal love.

A woman – a beautiful woman – is intelligence, mystery, style, grace, and a few seductive details, such as a black umbrella and her very own ocean residing in her soul.

Do you want to sail the oceans, cavorting with dolphins?
Become a sailor!
 Or to sprout wings and soar above the clouds?
You’ll need to become an airplane pilot.
 Or is it your wish to journey far and wide?
Become a world traveler.
 Or is spinning yarns and telling tales your thing?
Become a writer.
 

A synagogue celebrating its “bar mitzvah” and “coming of age”? Are these just cleverly cute poetic devices that make catchy headlines in a local Jewish weekly newspaper? Or is there some deeper, truer meaning to those ideas?

There is a word “organism,” which means, in rough laymen’s terms, a “living individual”.

Like Pisa, Florence, Italy is located on the River Arno. It has a glorious history, even being called the birthplace of the Renaissance, and the “Athens of the Middle Ages.” Florence is also a major fashion center, and has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Noteworthy in Florence is the Uffizi Gallery,

One of Italy’s larger cities, Verona sits on the River Adige in the country’s northeast region.

Among the events that attract over three million tourists to Verona annually is the opera festival in the Verona amphitheatre, aka Arena de Verona. We will have much to say about the latter.

So let’s get to it.

Venice, one of the world’s top-tier great cities, is unique for the well-known canals and waterways that are its ‘streets’. Who hasn’t seen the gondola photos?

The city, which sits on a peninsula of the Adriatic sea, and is comprised of islands and canals, is an internationally famous tourist attraction.

The meaning of “coming of age” in Judaism derives from a three-thousand year tradition: at 13 years of age a Jewish boy becomes a man (a Jewish girl attains womanhood at 12).

“Bar mitzvah” in Hebrew literally means “son of commandment”, referring to the fact that the celebrant is now bound by all the obligations of Judaism.

Pisa, with a population of almost 90,000, sits on the Arno, a river highly scenic in spots. The sunset scene you see was taken on our approach to Pisa.

It’s hard to say how famous Pisa would have been without its renowned tower. But who knows, Pisa might have dug up a spare ‘r’

Milan is a very different kind of Italian city from all the others we had seen. (No one even seems to know where the name comes from, and – to add insult to injury – English speakers have deemed even the final “o” of “Milano” superfluous.)

The lion has stationed himself outside this cathedral in Milano,