Last week, Sardegna (a beautiful island, featured below) was my destination. I have also been lucky to travel recently in Tuscany and with a group of friends in Italy's Piemonte and Liguria regions on an outstanding food and wine adventure (stay tuned!)
In launching this newsletter we'd like to invite you to submit your favorite photos from a Bethesda Travel vacation (see below for contest details). As an added feature, we will share cultural notes highlighting movies, museum exhibits, performances, restaurants, and new destinations for your interest.We encourage you to forward this newsletter to family, friends and neighbors and we hope that reading about Sardegna will inspire you to put it on your alpha list for a future vacation! Guido Adelfio, President
Bethesda Travel Center LLC
Greetings! In response to many requests from our clients we are happy to announce our new newsletter!! Extensive travels throughout the year have kept us current with what is going on in the European travel world and we plan to share our experiences and ideas with you on a regular basis to keep you up to date! Ciao from Guido!!
Conventional wisdom aside, our experience is that prices in Europe for average things, such as cappuccino, museum entrances, panini, bus or train tickets, a trattoria dinner, etc. are pretty much on a par with what we are accustomed to paying in the US. Higher-end items such as city hotel rooms, deluxe restaurants, designer clothing and the like generally run more than in the U.S. What this means to the traveller is that if you are careful about your expenditures you can certainly visit Europe on a contained budget! Good value is on all of our minds these days! We're keeping an eye on this trend, hoping it will continue well into 2009! Italian Islands: Sardegna
Italy's best kept secret is its seacoast, especially the islands. Sicily is the largest of the islands, and Sardegna the second largest. Sardegna is primarily known for two things; ancient ruins and the Costa Smeralda. On a recent visit these were certainly the highlights and Sardegna offers much, much more! The main city of Sardegna is Cagliari, on the southeast corner of the island and about an hour from Rome by air. Cagliari occupies a natural harbor with a promontory that once provided protection, and now offers restaurants and fabulous views! Proceeding south along the Tyrrhenian Sea, the ancient Phoenician town of Nora (inhabited for about 1,300 years from the VIII-c BC until the fall of the Roman Empire in the IV-c AD) offers exceptional ruins with a Roman theater and extensive Roman baths. The azure waters of Sardegna are on both sides of the town and the setting is magnifico! Moving west along the coast you will find wonderful bays and rugged countryside. Boaters will be in heaven. This is a coast well worth exploring! On the west coast are rugged coves and beaches as well as pretty seaside towns such as Cabras and Tharros, which is another remarkable Phoenician site. Several hotels and small restaurants grace the area if you really want to get away from it all! In addition to the seacoast, Sardegna is home to more than 7,000 stone Nuraghe - - Bronze Age igloo-like structures. Barumini, in the heart of the island, is a UNESCO site and this extensive ancient village is well worth a visit! And remember! the 2009 travel season is just around the corner...
So call or email us today to start planning your vacation of a lifetime (our specialty!)
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Photo Contest!
The movie is an adaptation of James McBride's novel, which tells the story of four black US soldiers who crossed the Serchio River in the fall of 1944 and reached Sant'Anna about a month after the massacre.
The interaction between the soldiers and an orphaned eight-year-old boy figure prominently in the movie. A strong subtext of racism pervades and prepare yourselves because the violence is terrible. Over the years, resistance fighters have been glorified for their practical methods and noble goals. In this case, the controversy came up since the movie (and the novel) attribute the massacre to a partisan who betrayed his colleagues by collaborating with the Germans and then left the townpeople to their destiny. The subsequent cover up by authorities wishing to bury the past makes this horrific episode even more sensitive in Italy.
The partisans' mission was anti-Nazi but it was also a little bit unclear, since it sometimes degraded to every-man-for-himself. To understand this better, why not rent a surrealistic Italian movie from the1980's called La Notte di San Lorenzo (Night of the Shooting Stars)?
It seems to me that the criticism of this movie is due to Italian sensibilities asking how a foreign novelist and a foreign filmmaker can make judgements about episodes in Italy, in wartime, more than 60 years ago. My opinion? Definitely go see it! And then make up your own mind. Also see Miracle at St. Anna.
Miracle at St. Anna:
A Controversy
Spike Lee's new movie, Miracle at St. Anna has sparked a major controversy in Italy. The massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema (near Pietrasanta in western Tuscany) occurred on August 12, 1944, when some 560 civilians were brutally murdered by the SS in response to attacks by partisans, who were Italian resistance fighters. A BTC Favorite: Ristorante Kontiki
José gives a very strong recommendation to this unique restaurant/ wine bar in the Ligurian hills above Sestri Levante. Housed in a beautiful modern building with breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains and the Riviera, Kontiki offers a friendly atmosphere and, of course, great food! (Hint: the seafood selections are fresh from the Ligurian Sea!!!) Check it out here. And of course we'd be happy to plan your entire vacation around a romantic dinner at Kontiki! We really love it when our clients share photos of their trip. We enjoy getting the pictures, and it's always fun to see how people notice and capture different images --even when travelling to the same destination. It makes us feel like we were right there with you!!We'd like to share some of our favorites via future newsletters. So we invite you to send us your best pics (up to four) from a Bethesda Travel Center trip for a little contest (think vino piemontese personally selected by Guido!). Please email your digital photos (jpeg format preferred) to ciao@bethesdatravel.com by 20 Nov. We'll feature our favorites on our new website (updates coming soon)!Bethesda Travel Center Named One of Maryland's Top Businesses!!
The Gazette of Politics and Business designated a select few of Maryland's top businesses for 2008. The list was chosen based on revenue growth, innovation, workplace satisfaction, and community service. We are extremely proud to announce that Bethesda Travel Center was named to this prestigious list!! Picasso and the Masters
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Picasso's works next to the master- pieces that inspired them!! Through 02 Feb 2009 at the Grand Palais in Paris, with smaller shows are running concurrently at Louvre and Orsay Museums. Reviewed by the International Herald Tribuneand the NY Times. Hmmmm,,, might be the perfect time for a quick trip to Paris???!!!beautiful statues and frescoes from Pompeii and surrounding villas and towns around the Bay of Naples, many of which were forever frozen in time when the disastrous eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD entombed them in a mountain of ash. Apart from Pompeii, the areas highlighted in the show include Stabiae, Oplontis, Herculaneum, Baiae, the Region of Campania and the Archaeological Museum of Naples. You may have enjoyed visiting these places on your past Bethesda Travel Center vacations!
Since the Imperial Roman world was largely built around trading, engineering and warfare, the Golden Age of Greece was considered to be the cradle of culture, much as we now think of the Renaissance. When wealthy Romans built their sumptuous villas to enjoy the favorable climate, hot water springs and spectacular views around the Bay of Naples, Greek motifs dominated their architecture and art. The main theme of the show reveals the importance the Romans placed on Greek culture from roughly the VII-c BC (~700 years before Pompeii was destroyed). Overlaid on the Greek motif are the spectacular architecture of the the palatial homes in the area, including the Villa dei Papiri near Herculaneum, which inspired Paul Getty's mansion in Malibu. Also on display are works from the XVIII-c when the discovery of Pompeii sparked the European imagination and painters sought to portray the eruption in the "romantic landscape" style of the day. Architects of the era also combined the frescoed interior decorations into ceiling and wall treatments. An example of this can be seen in Washington DC, in the decorative elements of the US Capitol, executed by Constantino Brumidi in the mid-1800's. The exhibited works are overwhelmingly beautiful and something everyone (even the kids!!) should make it a point to go see. The exhibit remains in DC until March. After that, it moves to LA from May to October, 2009. For info, see NGA.gov.Absolutely Do Not Miss It!!
Northwest Sardegna is known as the Costa Smeralda (Emerald Coast). This area was extremely remote until the 1960's brought a classy type of development. The region is now filled with outstanding hotels and resorts such as the Cala di Volpe, pictured here! The great thing about Sardegna is that you can make it either a destination of its own for a stay of a week or more, or just spend 3-4 nights here, devoting the rest of your vacation to the main Italian peninsula! You won't go wrong at all! We hope Sardegna will feature prominently in a future vacation! Call or email us for planning ideas and details! Map of Sardegna. 
Bethesda Travel Center LLC
4422 East West Highway
Bethesda MD 20814
Phone: 301-656-1670
Phone: 888-656-1670
Fax: 301-656-6244
Money Matters
And now a little update - the great news is that the US dollar has recently gained more than 20% relative to the euro and the UK sterling! Hopefully the stronger dollar and abated fuel costs will stay with us! 
The current show at the National Gallery's East Wing is titled "Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples." It is a must-see! The exhibit features some of the most
