We Have Porchetta for Breakfast
I have a few friends who will understand this. One in particular. Yesterday was Sunday and that can mean only one thing: porchetta at the Monterchi market. Since I’ve vowed to have one every week I’m here, I couldn’t miss this. Here’s the problem: If you don’t go early...
We Get to Know our Neighborhood
We live in the Borghetto neighborhood. According to the locals, this area is pretty much the way it was in the 16th century. Our little block is a perfectly preserved piece of the Renaissance. Il Borghetto implies the area had developed into a small hamlet within the town. It’s...
We Have an Afternoon at the Lake
Today is a beautiful late summer day – nice breeze, not too hot, a little crispness in the air. We decided to go somewhere fun and different today and settled on driving over to Lake Trasimeno. It’s about an hour away and it’s an incredible drive. We took the...
We Have Seen the Future and We Plan to Eat it
It’s late summer and it’s almost harvest time for grapes and olives. This will be our future wine and olive oil. You see massive vineyards in the big wine areas like Chianti, but almost anyone with a spot of soil grows either some grapes or some olive trees. And...
We Go to Church
The parish church is just up the street from us, and my Catholic, former altar boy husband, really wants to go to church. This Sunday we went to church. It took us a while to figure out what time the service started. It doesn’t seem to be posted anywhere,...
We Go to Festas
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. There’s always something going on here. If they’re not blessing something, or celebrating something, or commemorating something, they’re going to find some reason to come together – or maybe no reason at all. Just this weekend we’ve been to three different...
We Have a Regular Day
Lots of people have asked what a regular day is like for us so I thought I would chronicle a day in the life of our sabbatical. We usually get up about 7:00 or so. Since we sleep with the windows open a little, the neighborhood starts waking up...
We Love our Town
We drove to Sansepolcro this morning to get a few odds and ends – a colander, some wooden spoons, some Vick’s vapor rub – and had a very pleasant drive. It’s about a 10 minute drive to Sansepolcro. Anghiari is split by a long straight road that slices the...
We Go to the Market
Every Wednesday morning in Anghiari there’s a market. There’s a little bit of everything there. T-shirts, winter coats, underwear, socks, bath mats, towel bars, and food. It’s the food, of course, that we go for. Although, I’m a little ashamed to admit that I did buy a skirt and...
We Take an Overnight Trip
One of the things we really wanted to do when we made this leap was to travel around Italy and other parts of Europe. We thought the time was right to test the waters and take a little overnight trip. We decided to go to Verona, mainly because we’ve...