GPS systems were built for people like me and the Garmin nüvi 270 is the best for the price. I am pretty much lost the minute I get in my car. I do a little better on foot, but still you don’t want me to be the one responsible for getting a travel group from one place to the next unless it involves trains.

The Garmin nüvi 270 will help you navigate the small cities and towns of Italy as well as other places in Europe. The device is especially useful when you are driving as it keeps you from having to look at maps while you are trying to avoid speeding motorcycles and lumbering trucks on the narrow, winding roads in Italy.

Product Description for the Garmin nüvi 270 3.5-Inch Portable GPS Navigator:

The nüvi 270 is built with a high-sensitivity WAAS-enabled GPS receiver for extreme accuracy, as well as an SD card slot for storing your media and additional navigation tools, and a USB interface for loading data. All this is wrapped up in a package that measures 3.8 x 2.8 x .8 inches (W x H x D) and weighs just 5.2 ounces. The nüvi 270's 3.5-inch (diagonal) display is touchscreen-enabled, making it a cinch to control the device with your fingertips.

A rechargeable lithium-ion battery provides up to five hours of battery life depending on use.
The nüvi 270 comes ready to go right out of the box with preloaded City Navigator NT street maps, including a hefty points of interest (POIs) database with hotels, restaurants, fuel, ATMs and more. Simply touch the color screen to enter a destination, and nüvi takes you there with 2D or 3D maps and turn-by-turn voice directions. In addition, nüvi 270 accepts custom points of interest (POIs), such as school zones and safety cameras and lets you set proximity alerts to warn you of upcoming POIs.

Santa Margherita Ligure is a combination of old and new. Wake up early enough and you can still find local fishermen unloading their daily catch and see locals gossiping on the benches that dot the harbor. Visit the harbor later in the day and you will see yachts so big and from so many exotic places that you will think you are in Monaco.

Santa Margherita Ligure lies between the Cinque Terre to the south and Genova to the north. Located in the middle of the Italian Riviera, Santa Margherita is a cheaper place to stay than Portofino, but it is no less beautiful. Located about 3.75 miles (6 km) from Portofino you can walk to Portofino by following the signs.

The town of Santa Margherita is large enough that it can easily absorb the tourists that arrive by boat, train or bus, while still providing a small town feel. Visitors can take a walk along the palm lined harbor, wander through the marina or enjoy the small town beach.

Bars, restaurants, cafés, along with a few upscale stores and gelaterie selling delicious gelato line the harbor and sea. The restaurants range in price depending on the fare and the view. If you are planning a hike to Portofino you can pick up picnic supplies at the Coop supermarket located in Corso Matteoti. The supermarket seems to keep its own hours. The last time I visited Santa Margherita the market closed early because it had been raining all day. Located near the Coop is a bookstore which has a limited selection of used paperbacks in English.

I consider my purchase of these JVC Noise Cancelling Headphones to be my best purchase of the year. When I fly I like to pretend I am not flying which is pretty hard to do when you have kids screaming, passengers ringing their service bell and pilots and flight attendants making those annoying announcements. These headphones block all that out (though I suggest you take them off or at least turn them off to hear the announcements just in case it is something important).

The headphones are very comfortable and lightweight. You can turn the noise cancelling feature off and use these as regular headphones which lets you hear what is going on around you including people speaking to you.

The JVC HANC250 Noise Cancelling Headphones use 1 AAA battery so make sure you put a couple extra in the storage bag so you will never be without a battery.

JVC HANC250 Noise Cancelling Headphones Product Description

The HANC250 is an extremely effective pair of noise-cancelling headphones, with 85% noise reduction with feedback technology, as well as memory foam cushion and extremely smooth ear-pad surface that isolate background noise effectively. They also function as a pair of normal headphones when turned off. Memory Foam cushion earpads Also function as regular headphones

Putumayo Presents: Italian Café is different from the Rough Guide to the Music of Italy. Whereas Rough Guide presents more traditional, folk music, Putumayo sounds like it is from the 1950’s through maybe the 1980’s or so. The music is fun and light.

I like the upbeat tempo of the Putumayo Presents CD. Not that you hear this type of music in the cafés these days but it does remind me of Italy even if it is the Italy of movies. When I listen to this CD I think of Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Dean Martin with a little Frank Sinatra thrown in.

Interestingly, most music was banned under the Italian fascists. I found the following interesting; it is from the product description:

“While most foreign music was banned under the Italian fascist regime, Fred Buscaglione wound up in a U.S. internment camp, where he was able to get a jumpstart in trying out the styles emerging from America. Quartetto Cetra emerged in the late ’40s, when they provided the overdubs for the Italian versions of the movies Dumbo and Wizard of Oz. The following decade found Renato Carosone blending Neapolitan folk music with American jazz and boogie-woogie to create a signature style that made him a household name in Italy and a chart-topping crooner in the U.S.

Nicola Arigliano is the only 1950s-era artist on Italian Café performing to this day. Born in 1923 in a small village in southern Italy, Arigliano ran away from home when he was just 11 years old to play music in the nightclubs of Milan. Arigliano disappeared from the concert stage for 30 years. In the past decade he re-emerged with four new albums.

Gianmaria Testa is more famous abroad than he is at home in Italy, where he works as a train station manager. You can hear his trademark gruff, whispering voice on two songs on Italian Café. Daniele Silvestri’s "Le Cose in Comune" won Italy’s equivalent of the Grammy, as best song of the year.

I love this CD! The Rough Guide to the Music of Italy is a great overview of traditional Italian music. This is not a Pizza Pie in the Sky That’s Amore kind of CD. There is no Dean Martin or Perry Como, not that they are bad. I love Perry Como he is from my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, but that is not what you will find on this CD.

The CD features a wide variety of Italian musical styles including a Tarantella. The Tarantella is actually an Italian folk dance that originated in the town of Taranto. When you hear the music associated with the Tarantella you will recognize it. Though a Tarantella is different in each region they all have the same basic upbeat tempo – it is the kind of music you often hear in pizza parlors.

The music on the Rough Guide to the Music of Italy comes from all over Italy. It is primarily traditional music though there are some contemporary styles. The songs are sung in Italian including a few of the lesser known dialects.

I downloaded the songs onto my iPod. Since I usually listen to my iPod on shuffle, especially when I am driving, it is fun to have songs from my Italian CD’s start playing at random.