I have seen that Travelex is offering to send sums of up to £2,500 direct to an Italian bank account for a fee of 99p. Their exchange rate appears to be competitive. Has anyone used this service?
Used the 99p Travelex money transfer successfully. It took 4 working days to arrive in my Italian account. Their internet exchange rate was close to the Caxton rate.
Try looking at www.insurance4carhire.co.uk. For £49 you can get a years's insurance to cover all excess charges. It looks particularly good value if you will be making several trips in one year. I have been insured with them for several years but, fortunately, have never had to make a claim, so I can't comment on how well they perform when it comes to the crunch. I have hired many, many cars in Italy in recent years but always from Hertz, Avis or Europcar. Never any problems. The dreadful stories we have all heard seem to relate to less well known companies. Remember that you are likely to receive an Italian make of car, and personally, I'm not very familiar with Italian car models. So when I am given the keys to some model of Fiat, Lancia or Alfa that is supposed to be the equivalent of (eg) the Ford Focus that I ordered, I never know whether it's going to be suitable until I've actually seen it. So it can save a lot of time if you do a bit of homework before you go!
I bought in Lunigiana a few months ago. The property is real value for money and very conveniently located. It's a kilometer or so from Bagnone between the motorway access at Aulla and Pontremoli. I've also heard that the mayor has announced that the motorway will be opening up at Villafranca some time in the future, so that will help property prices in the area I should imagine. Lunigiana is a great location, although my wife complains about the amount of rain in the winter. (Mountains all around).
I have found some 'easy listening' at www.walter.bz/podcast. On this site is a collection of 20 children's stories, all read slowly and clearly, and many with a printed text to go with them. Many are well known stories from the brothers Grimm, Hans Anderson etc so they might be familiar already.Somewhat more advanced is an alternative suggestion for radio listening at www.radio24.ilsole24ore.com.All their programmes are stored in an archive so that you can listen to them repeatedly - click on Archivio to get to the archive.There are programmes for all tastes but my suggestion is 'Magazine 24' which is a review of the week's current affairs magazines. This is delivered by a single speaker at a reasonable pace, so I find it one of the easier ones to understand.
Hello Tom,You can also find some message boards which are specific to family history. The obvious ones arehttp://genforum.genealogy.comhttp://www.rootsweb.comBoth sites have many messages from people searching for the Angelo surname - enough to make you realise that you have a lot of work ahead of you if you are ever to track your family down.My suggestion would be that you will need to find a lot more about your family from American sources before you try looking in Italy. Hopefully there will be some immigration records somewhere for your grandparents which give some precise information as to where they came from. The best collection is at www.ellisisland.org. Another angle from which to start is to try and find your grandparents in one of the earlier US censuses. These are all available online at www.ancestry.com, but unfortunately they charge for access to their data.Best of luck with your search.
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I am one of the recipients of all this bread - the marmelade intake has gone up, and so has my weight on the scales!
Used the 99p Travelex money transfer successfully. It took 4 working days to arrive in my Italian account. Their internet exchange rate was close to the Caxton rate.
Try looking at www.insurance4carhire.co.uk. For £49 you can get a years's insurance to cover all excess charges. It looks particularly good value if you will be making several trips in one year. I have been insured with them for several years but, fortunately, have never had to make a claim, so I can't comment on how well they perform when it comes to the crunch. I have hired many, many cars in Italy in recent years but always from Hertz, Avis or Europcar. Never any problems. The dreadful stories we have all heard seem to relate to less well known companies. Remember that you are likely to receive an Italian make of car, and personally, I'm not very familiar with Italian car models. So when I am given the keys to some model of Fiat, Lancia or Alfa that is supposed to be the equivalent of (eg) the Ford Focus that I ordered, I never know whether it's going to be suitable until I've actually seen it. So it can save a lot of time if you do a bit of homework before you go!
I bought in Lunigiana a few months ago. The property is real value for money and very conveniently located. It's a kilometer or so from Bagnone between the motorway access at Aulla and Pontremoli. I've also heard that the mayor has announced that the motorway will be opening up at Villafranca some time in the future, so that will help property prices in the area I should imagine. Lunigiana is a great location, although my wife complains about the amount of rain in the winter. (Mountains all around).
I have found some 'easy listening' at www.walter.bz/podcast. On this site is a collection of 20 children's stories, all read slowly and clearly, and many with a printed text to go with them. Many are well known stories from the brothers Grimm, Hans Anderson etc so they might be familiar already.Somewhat more advanced is an alternative suggestion for radio listening at www.radio24.ilsole24ore.com.All their programmes are stored in an archive so that you can listen to them repeatedly - click on Archivio to get to the archive.There are programmes for all tastes but my suggestion is 'Magazine 24' which is a review of the week's current affairs magazines. This is delivered by a single speaker at a reasonable pace, so I find it one of the easier ones to understand.
Hello Tom,You can also find some message boards which are specific to family history. The obvious ones arehttp://genforum.genealogy.comhttp://www.rootsweb.comBoth sites have many messages from people searching for the Angelo surname - enough to make you realise that you have a lot of work ahead of you if you are ever to track your family down.My suggestion would be that you will need to find a lot more about your family from American sources before you try looking in Italy. Hopefully there will be some immigration records somewhere for your grandparents which give some precise information as to where they came from. The best collection is at www.ellisisland.org. Another angle from which to start is to try and find your grandparents in one of the earlier US censuses. These are all available online at www.ancestry.com, but unfortunately they charge for access to their data.Best of luck with your search.
Don't you think you should be able to get rid of one picture if you want to? After all what if I loaded up me in my nightie by mistake?