It's been a year and a half since the time I traveled to Carrara, Italy to film the episode, "The Climb." I'm really lucky to be able to take my brother and his new bride to experience a truly unique part of Tuscany - scaling cliffs of marble and water through one of the largest rock faces located in this region of Italy!

Today was spent in a very rainy, damp and foggy valley not far from Lucca, a beautiful walled-in town located in Tuscany. I was told by friends that I needed to visit Devil's Bridge, and if I were lucky enough to capture it with fog, it would be a great way to experience the eerie architectural wonder. Apparently the architect made a pact with the devil when the bridge was built in 1046 to give his soul, provided the bridge was a successful architectural feat. When the bridge was inaugurated, three animals were sent over first just to make sure nobody would disappear by the hand of the devil!

This is a shot I took over this past weekend when I popped over to Venice to enjoy a few days with friends and rowing lessons on a gondola down the Grand Canal. All weekend was spent rowing through little canals passing through neighborhoods where locals were enjoying the afternoon sun, an apperitif and live music on the "barge"/boat on which I was lucky to be invited to sit!

This year I've decided to finally do what I've been dreaming about since I was fourteen: live part-time in Italy. After several recent years of consideration and searching for the best destination for this time in my life, I chose an apartment just outside of Florence in the Tuscan hills of Chianti, Italy. Two words: LOVING IT!! This picture was taken on one of my daily walks down the road from home (not quite the Upper East Side!).

One of the many perks traveling to fun places is participating in some extraordinary things! Hang glider: $4,500. Helmet, skiis and a clean pair of shorts: $625. Leaving my sanity on the ground and letting my spirit take wing: priceless.

Just when I thought we were finished with production…

Since I can’t change the industry, I might as well change my product! I’ve decided to produce not four - but thirteen episodes - and have them finished in the next few months. For those of you who are not in the television industry (myself included!), networks will license content in quantities of thirteen or twenty-six since a full season is twenty-six weeks long, and re-run thirteen if it’s the bare-minimum of what one has. So…we’re back on the road!

I believe in my last blog I alluded to the multiple challenges on the road to launching this series…UGH! That was an understatement! While I don’t want to bore any of you actually reading this with details, suffice it to say from the development, funding, production, post-production, distribution, website initiatives, revenue models, etc. etc…I’ve needed to go back to the drawing board once, twice, three times… The good news is that I’m still alive and my heart is still ticking!

When I was young my grandpa used to say to me, “Fire in the belly, kid!” I was the youngest of eleven grandkids until I was seven years old, and my grandpa would always play around with me. I’d run past him seated in “his chair”: an oversized, winged-back chair in the corner of the living room. He would grab me by the arm, pull me over and say, “What was your name again?” I’d get so irritated because I was usually running to keep up with my cousins, and I’d look at my gram as if to say, “Seriously, Gram…where did you find this one?”