Month: November 2015

We spent a couple of nights with Tim and Julie near Orvieto.  We stayed in an amazing place with incredible views.  It was out in the country about a 15 minute drive from Orvieto.  We got in after dark, so all we could see were the lights from the...

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  It’s open to anyone to celebrate – you don’t have to be a certain religion or ethnicity or creed to be thankful.  It’s a time for personal reflection on what matters most to you.  We should do this everyday, but, sadly, most of us...

We have several Italian friends who we met through our former business, Bella Italia.  We met them all right around the same time and have kept in touch with them over the years.  Some are contemporaries, like Michelangelo, and some are much younger than us, like Barbara, Ludo, and...

Recently we had dinner at Michelangelo and Rosella’s.  It was, as usual, fabulous.  We had antipasto of prosciutto, cheeses, and spreads that were so delicious I didn’t get a picture.  For dinner, she made polenta with pancetta, sausage, and mushrooms.  And because that was just not enough, she also...

You never know where a day in Italy will take you.  On Tim and Julie’s first relatively coherent day in Italy, we drove to Umbria and visited Trevi and Assisi.  Trevi is the olive oil capital of Italy (so they say – I’m sure many other towns would dispute...

Our dear friends, Tim and Julie, have arrived for a visit.  We’ve traveled to Italy many times over the years with Tim and Julie and always think of them whenever we see anything new or have a wonderful experience (which is quite often).  We share the same world view...

I’ve said this before and I’ll probably say it more times, but Anghiari is really a small town.  One of our neighbors, an older gentlemen who speaks absolutely no English, lets us know about all the insider events going on around town.  He recently told us about something on...

I tell people when they come to Italy that you have to look up.  You can’t just look at eye level or you miss so much.  Especially in an old village like Anghiari. The buildings in the hill towns are the original high rises.  They go up four and...

We thought the summer was the prime season for festas, but they keep coming.  In fact, there are so many coming up that we have to keep a notepad handy to write them all down when we come across them.  We can’t miss one.  I can’t possibly write about...

Myra’s flight left from Rome, so we saved doing all that was Rome for the end of her trip.  By then she had visited Florence, Venice, Tuscany and Umbria.  She had dined in Italian homes, met and got to know families, walked hill towns, sampled the unique local products...