The Italian Chronicles of a Rogue Tourist: Volume I: Discovering Calitri: Volume 1

The Italian Chronicles of a Rogue Tourist, Volume I: Discovering Calitri, is a collection of travel essays written during the years 2006 through 2008. This first volume recounts the initial adventures of an American couple who purchase a home in the southern Italian town of Calitri. Lofty, medieval Calitri cascades down the side of a bluff, halfway between Naples, on Italy's left coast, and Bari to the right. On the day of their arrival in the medieval Borgo, a curious town official approached them and asked, “Why you come here?” The answer to that question resides in the fact that Calitri is the real face of Italy, as yet untouched by tourism. It is a place punctuated by genuine friendships, a Mediterranean lifestyle of slow food and slow living, and the eye contact of a sincere buongiorno in the morning and buonasera during a twilight stroll. The roots of Calitri are apparent in its medieval village. Its cobbled hallway-like streets, once restricted to the passage of pedestrians, horses and pack animals of old, today remain too narrow for automobiles to negotiate. Their home away, Casa della Feritoia is nestled among these winding lanes in the heart of Calitri’s Borgo. Through his creative and descriptive passages, Monico takes you on a singular and enticing journey, from rarely tourist-traveled villages to spectacular and famed landmarks. Paolo’s insight and wit draw the reader into a beautifully crafted series of essays. Become a tourist yourself, as you imagine sampling classic Italian cuisine, harvesting grapes, exploring caverns beneath Calitri, or meeting its quirky and charming inhabitants. Traverse Italy with the author and his wife, Maria Elena, as they venture farther afield, to places like a Lake Como Villa, the water kingdom of Venice, and to Rome and the Vatican's Lantern. Share in their Italian experiences and gain a sense of Italy and its people. The Italian Chronicles of a Rogue Tourist will transport both the armchair and seasoned traveler to a land and people so out-of-the-ordinary, so beautiful in fact, that it had to be christened “Bella.”

Paul Monico is a former career military officer. Following graduation from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1969, he served 24 years first as a Strategic Air Command B-52 aircraft commander and later as a cruise missile and systems development engineer. Following his military service, he was employed by defense contractor, Raytheon Company, as a software requirements engineer until his retirement in 2009. He is married to his high school sweetheart, Mary Ellen (Maria Elena). Together they have three children. When not traveling in Italy, he and his wife spend their time in the state of New Hampshire, where he writes, fishes, and shovels snow.