The second week of my spring 2017 trip to Italy brought me back to Tuscany, to Siena, the beautiful Medieval city that has become my defacto home. I always try to see and do different things upon every visit. This time, I spent two wonderful days exploring the Tuscan countryside with my friend and author …
In addition to touring Medieval towns, centuries-old churches and taking in breathtaking panoramas of the Italian countryside, my trip to Italy had something new on the itinerary: visiting a YMCA. My base was Siena. While planning day trips to the Tuscan countryside, I discovered there was a YMCA branch in the nearby town of Grosseto. …
My Unicorn contrada guide Fabio has seen eight Palio victories for the Unicorn. Two of those, 1983 and 2001, the horse won without the jockey. Remember, with the Palio, it’s all about the horse. Then Fabio reminded me of something. At the horse blessing, before the race, the priest doesn’t look at the fantino, (jockey) …
Well, I could describe the beauty of the Italian countryside again. But I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. Today we visited the Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, a Benedictine Monastery founded in 1313. On our way there, we drove through an area called La Crete with its stunning display of rolling hills that, with …
Tuscany has an abundance of small villages and towns, each as picturesque as the next. Since I started my six-week course at Saena Iulia language school in Siena, I’ve been lucky enough to discover a few of these places thanks to wonderful day trips each week that the school organizes. These places are small and …
I really don’t need to go into too many details about the beauty of Chianti, do I? Even in December, with the harvested grape vines and the brown trees that you can tell were once filled with leaves of red, orange and yellow, this area is still incredibly beautiful. Italy wine country. My mom used …
I got chills when I saw Cortona from the road on Thursday. The town sits wedged into a hill in the Tuscan countryside and when you see it for the first time, you’re not sure that it’s real. This was the second time I’d seen it. The first time was in 2003 with my …
One week in and I've reviewed the rules about Italian prepositions, irregular verbs and the trapassato prossimo. What? You know, when you say things like, "When I arrived at the restaurant, the group had already drank all of the prosecco." In other news, a highlight of my first week was our little trip in Chianti, …
1cannolo, 2cannoli 