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Category: Travel with Tamela

History, Music, Food, and Serenity at Kentucky’s Shaker Village

Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill goat
When you hear the word “Shaker” you likely think of 19th-century furniture. Fair enough. That said, Shaker innovations went far beyond furniture and crafts. They invented: The flat broom The circular saw blade The spring clothespin Chair tilter buttons The paper seed envelope. They also developed social reforms that provided equal status for people of […]

Umbria by Motorcycle: Lake Corbara Towns

Giuseppe Garibaldi statue in Todi, Italy
Everyone in Italy parks scooters and motorbikes chockablock. No matter how much chrome or how many farkles a bike is adorned with, I never saw an incident of I'm-too-special-and-my-bike's-too-precious-to-share-a-parking-space behavior. If there is enough space to mount and dismount, that's sufficient; share the space.

Italy by Motorcycle: Negotiating with a Greve in Chianti Shopkeeper

The "gallo nero" (black cockerel) is everywhere in the Chianti region. This one is in the Piazza Matteotti.
After leaving San Gimignano we head to Greve in Chianti, the birthplace of Giovanni da Verrazzano. He is famous for being the first  European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between Florida and Newfoundland, and for discovering the New York Bay in 1524. This discovery is why the bridge spanning the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island bears his name.