It's that time again. I’m going back to Italy, back to Siena, where I spent six weeks last year at a language school. I plan on continuing my intensive studies there but my first item of business is experiencing the Palio. This became a bucket list item last December. The Palio is the city's historic, …
While this blog is all about my adventures in Italy, today I make an exception. Today marks the 13th anniversary of the kidney transplant. I gave one of my kidneys to my mother on March 25, 2003 and every year since, I celebrate the anniversary with a slice of cheesecake and a glass of Prosecco. …
I love discovering Sicily. It’s not only where my familial roots are planted – my mother was born here and my father’s family is from here – it’s simply a joy to travel around a place so different from the rest of the boot. Luckily for me, my mom and her brothers went back to …
Last fall, I spent six weeks at Saena Iulia Italian language school in Siena, Italy, deciding that I wanted to get as close to fluency in Italian as I could. Six weeks, full immersion, Siena, Italy. What’s not to love? How about the subjunctive tense of verbs? Or prepositions? I don’t love prepositions. Nor trying …
Continue reading Studying Italian in Italy: Bella. Grande. Favoloso.
I’m not sure you can eat any better in Bologna than how I did for a few days at the end of December but I did find a way: I ate tortelloni that was made at home. And I made it! OK, I didn’t make all of it. I made some of it. Sort of. …
Mauro Faleri was 18 years old the first time he participated in the “Passegiata storica,” the ceremony before the start of The Palio, the historic horse race held twice a year in Siena. He is a member of the Torre contrada, or neighborhood. “I was very proud,” he tells me. “It was fantastic. It was …
Continue reading The Palio of Siena: Tradition, Passion and Glory
Ah, Bologna, the city of porticoes, prosciutto and Parmigiano. My 2015 Italy adventure ended with five days in Bologna, a city I lived in for 18 months back in the mid-1990s. The city is known for its cuisine. In fact, every time I tell someone I lived there, the first thing they say is, “Ah …
Continue reading In Bologna. Prosciutto, Parmigiano and Terracotta
Christmas day in Grotte, Sicily started like any other Christmas day - with pancakes and red pajamas. I celebrated Christmas this year with cousins in Grotte, Sicily, the town where my mom was born. It’s also the town she left four years later when her parents decided that a better life awaited them in America. …
Striking. That’s the best adjective I have to describe what I thought when I first saw La Scala dei Turchi here in Sicily. The rock cliff, as you see in the photos, is simply stunning. The rock looks sharp, and at some points, it is, and yet the cliff looks like it's rolling waves. I’m …
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 …
1cannolo, 2cannoli 