Greetings, Darby, 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 other of our many groups which you may find of particular use, such as Media Only; Italy; France; Eating/Drinking the World; 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 writing/outlets and other work and activities, and more (please feel free to share your web site URL in your profile). If you have any books in print, send us the title(s) and we will be happy to feature them as a member courtesy in various places on our site.

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!). 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!