First Things First

Melanie Renzulli Life ,

A quick run-down of who am I, what I like, where I’ve been, and where I’m going or would like to go…

1. What do you do?
Freelance travel writer. I wrote The Unofficial Guide to Central Italy: Florence, Rome, Tuscany & Umbria and Frommer’s Irreverent Guide to Rome. I’ve also contributed to The Washington Post, Bell’Italia, TravelChannel.com, and other publications and web sites.

  1. What are you reading right now?
    Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra

  2. What’s in your CD player?
    You Are the Quarry by Morrissey

  3. Last three places visited:
    Paris; New York; Chapel Hill, NC

  4. Next three places you’ll visit:
    Apalachicola, FL; New York; Bombay (Mumbai), India

  5. Dream destinations
    Sicily, Tokyo, Havana, Rio, Cypress, Tunis, Giza, Barcelona, Moscow

  6. Where would you like to go again?
    Fortaleza, Brazil; Santa Fe, NM; Rome (always); Corfu, Greece; Curaçao; Toronto; Berlin

  7. If you could afford to go back to grad school, what would you study?
    Classics (Ancient Rome and Greece)

  8. Favorite authors/writers
    Alain de Botton, Jostein Gaarder, Peter Robb, Taras Grescoe, Tony Perrottet, Jan Morris, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ross King, Waverley Root

  9. Obsessed with…
    Magazines, cookbooks, yoga, tennis, Serge Gainsbourg, tomatoes, tropical fruit, getting out of town, and ANYTHING Italian.

And there you have it!