WHEN you are from Salamanca and you are offered by your employer a one-week vacation this spring, where will you go? Go to Italy of course. Italy is a very simple country populated with very loving and endearing people, male or female. That is naturally so because Italy is the seat of Roman Catholicism and people here are religious of course. Besides, it is in spring where flowers in just every tree and shrub unique to Italy are blooming. Although urban centers in Italy such as Rome, Milan, Venice, Florence, Tuscany and Naples are condensed with buildings, there are lots of trees in the suburban areas as well as in manors and villa compounds. This is where you can actually experience spring at its most gaiety for you will see with your very own two eyes the flowering of plants in various colors.

The nice thing about vacationing here in spring is that there are actually varied floras here in Italy. There are actually chestnut, oak, beech and conifers here. They are found in the mountainous regions here in the Alps. Speaking of the Alps, spring is one nice time of the year to be skiing there since it is not as cold as winter anymore. In fact, it’s about 18 degrees Celsisus there during spring in the Italian Alps. You still need to don your parka and other cold weather gear though so that you won’t have frostbite. Of course, no one in his right mind will wear sando in the Alps even during the middle of summer. And of course, make sure not to wear anything that is cottony in fiber because cotton tends to absorb moisture. You will get colder as a result.

In the Mediterranean regions such as Florence, there are nice dwarf palms, myrtles, laurels, junipers, corks and evergreens that are growing. But wait, that is not all. The nice thing about Italy in spring is the annual Milan spring fashion week collection showcase. It usually falls in the third week of February right after Valentines. If Ibiza is the capital of trance and party music, Milan is the fashion capital of the world. Lots of designer houses which are renowned all over North America converge here all in one city. Most of them are household names such as Fendi, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci and Giannini while others (Emilio Pucci and Alessandro de Benedetti) try to take smaller slices of the fashion market pie in their own little ways.

Italy can also be a picture of romance when it comes to springtime. There’s no other compelling character of an Italian romance in Hollywood as that with the one between Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. In the movie, Penelope’s character fell in love with Captain Corelli because she was smitten with his constant playing of the mandolin. That’s how romantic Italians can be. Mandolin, a form of guitar, is native to Italy. If we Spanish have mastered our art of flamenco music, the Italians are proud to be players of mandolin since the 18th century.

THIS Thursday, have a breathtaking honeymoon in Italy all throughout the weekend. And while you’re vacationing either in Rome or in Venice, how about renting the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. Under the Tuscan Sun talks all about a writer from San Francisco who wants to escape from her frustrations in life by taking a vacation to Tuscany. While taking the bus to Tuscany, she discovers a villa for sale and immediately takes it without a professional and technical home inspection. Because it is made in Hollywood and because of its obvious plot involving a foreign tourist going to Tuscany, this movie has been used by Tuscany real estate agents as their selling point whenever tourists are here in Italy.

Of course, in the real world, it’s much complicated. You need to have an Italian lawyer who is fluent in English and who knows Italian real estate policy to help you out in buying a house here in Tuscany. You must also assemble a team of home inspectors once you have chosen a certain villa to buy. The team must be composed of an architect who may remodel the villa, an interior designer who knows how to arrange the fixtures inside the villa for your convenience, an exterminator who will excruciatingly examine all the corridors in the house as well as the outside garden if there is the presence of vermin, a plumber who will fix examine possible leaking faucets, an electrician who will examine all the electrical wirings and of course the lawyer who will see to it that the property’s tax declarations are in order and whatever debt associated with the property must be inherited by the previous owner and not by the new one.

Then there are numerous factors to consider upon buying a new villa here in Tuscxany. Are you just like Frances of Under the Tuscan Sun someone who intends to live alone in the villa? If you are, do you want to hire the services of a gardener? Disadvantages about this can go two ways. Maybe the gardener will be hesitant to you if you are flirtatious. Remember that the Italians are generally very conservative people; Italy is after all the seat of Roman Catholicism. On the other hand, maybe you will have second thoughts about hiring a male gardener for fear of being raped. That fear is largely baseless though as Tuscany is known to have a very minimal crime rate and most of the crimes committed here are not random crimes such as home invasions or theft but are directed at specific targets.

And if you’re living alone, would you consider installing a central alarm system in your house as well as a panic room in your basement? That may be a necessity if you are staying alone and doubly more so if you have a four-year-old daughter. You don’t want your daughter to be the next Madeleine McCann or the next missing girl after the one featured in Gone Baby Gone, do you?