Itching for Italy

It’s that time of year—I’ve got an itch that needs scratching. The travel bug has bitten, and we’re off. This time, we’re itching for Italy.

As much as we like to travel and as often as we go to Europe, we’ve yet to step foot in Italy. From what we’ve read and seen, it’s going to be a full and rich experience.

In Venice, we’ll get around the Grand Canal by gondola and visit St. Mark’s Basilica and Square. We’ll visit the Gallerie dell’Accademia and cross both under and over the Bridge of Sighs.

In Florence, we’ll peer into the eyes of Michalangelo’s David at the Galleria dell’Accademia, stroll through the Piazza della Signoria, and visit the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

In Rome … where to begin? The Colosseum, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, and Roman Forum.  

And Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museums, maybe even a meeting with the Pope.

As a bonus, we’ll be spending a day in Casablanca, Morocco on the way there, where we’ll fortify ourselves with mint tea and strong coffee before visiting the Mohammad II Mosque and heading for Italy.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks for pictures and posts along the way at www.Facebook.com/EricDGoodman!

Ciao!

Eric in Arabia

Last year, Nataliya and I spent a week in United Arab Emirates. This year, my travel feature about our experience was published in Baltimore Style Magazine’s February issue. You can pick up the glossy version at newsstands or bookstores now, or check out the digital version online.

All of those scenes in movies, on television, in photographs depicting the middle-eastern sun beneath a sandy haze, glowing orange, is not simply the vision of the artist. This is really what the sun looks like here—you can look directly into it—and it’s beautiful.

Join me and Nataliya as we meet up with our old university friend, Sadiq, and our new friends Najeeb and Khalid. From Dubai to Abu Dhabi and a desert excursion in between.

Check it out at www.BaltimoreStyle.com/category/travel/.

Join Rafael Alvarez and Friends at The Ivy’s Bird in Hand

The next “Readings with Ralphie” event takes place on Tuesday, March 6 at 7 p.m. at The Ivy Bookshop’s Bird in Hand location, 11 E 33RD Street in Baltimore. Rafael will be joined by Jeff Richards, Mike Sporge, and myself. I’ll be reading from Womb: a novel in utero.

The event is free and open to the public. Books, food, and light fare will be for sale.

Want to learn more? Here’s the official write-up from The Ivy Bookshop’s website:

Readings with Ralphie, hosted by Rafael Alvarez, is the first Tuesday of each month. A lifelong Baltimorean, Alvarez worked as a City Desk reporter for the Baltimore Sun for twenty years, specializing in the folklore of city neighborhoods. In 2001 he left to work as a laborer on cable ships and soon after began writing for HBO’s police drama, The Wire.

Rafael will be joined by Eric D. Goodman, Jeff Richards and Mike Sproge.

 Eric D. Goodman is the author of Womb: A Novel in Utero, Tracks: A Novel in Stories, which won the 2011 Gold Medal for Best Fiction in the Mid-Atlantic Region from the Independent Publishers Book Awards, and Flightless Goose. He regularly reads his fiction on Baltimore’s WYPR and at book festivals and literary events. He is co-founder and curator of Baltimore's longest-running literary reading series, the Lit and Art Reading Series. Eric lives in Baltimore with his wife and two children, where he writes about trains, wombs, and animals gone wild, among other things.

 Jeff Richards, author of Open Country: A Civil War Novel in Stories, has published his short stories, essays, and cowboy poetry in numerous publications including Prick of the Spindle, The Broadkill Review, Pinch, New South, Gargoyle, and Southern Humanities Review and in several anthologies. A graduate of the Hollins Writing Program, he was the fiction editor and a board member of the Washington Review and taught English literature and creative writing for many years at George Washington University. Richards has worked as a dishwasher, door-to-door salesmen, farm worker, wilderness counselor, newspaper carrier, radio reporter, a busboy; and he has hitchhiked across the country five times. He is a native of Washington, D.C. where he still lives with his family, a mile from a Civil War battlefield.

Learn more at http://www.theivybookshop.com/upcomingevent/4162