Good afternoon, Stuart, and welcome to Tripatini! It's great to have you with us -- and we think you'll find our site productive as well as interesting and enjoyable.

To get the most out of Tripatini, we recommend you take a moment to join several of our many groups which you may find of particular use, such as Media Only, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, U.S.A. and the individual 50 states, Eating/Drinking the World, Wine Tourism, Culture Vultures, Sports Travel, Movies & Travel, Music & Travel, our Italian and French language/cultures clubs, and plenty of others covering many other topics and most destinations across the globe.

FYI, on your profile you'll see a green bar marked "Text Box," which you can turn into a box containing not just text but also photos and even videos about yourself, your travels, your web site, your writing/outlets, and more.

Finally, if you would, please be so kind as to spread the word among your travel-interested friends, family, colleagues, associates, and audience. It's fast and easy to use our "INVITE" function above left on the navigation bar to enter e-mails (even your whole list at once!). If you can cover us in any of your outlets, we'd of course be grateful, link exchange is welcome, and if you feel you might want to occasionally blog for us, rates/guidelines are available upon request. Finally, please join our Facebook fan page and follow us on Twitter (see front page info box); we'll be happy to reciprocate!

Thanks much for joining us; we wish you an outstanding rest of 2010, and it goes without saying that we look forward to seeing you online.

Cheers!