(Wish you were here?) I’d planned this brief January trip to meet with Sergio, the property manager, to go over work to be done this...

Venice doesn’t just make me happy; it makes me aware that I’m happy. I guess that's at least partly because Venice wakes up my senses....

I can never get enough of Venice, so made a run there before I left Italian soil in October. This time, I was staying at the hotel Ai...

Well, I’m on a roll. I just had another stay in Italy with family members. This time, I was joined by my nephew, John, and his wife,...

This trip was a real departure for me. I’m accustomed to traveling to Italy alone, but this time I was flanked by a jaunty gaggle of...

I was robbed at Rome’s Tiburtina bus station last week. A Roma woman took my portfolio-style wallet with about $500 in cash, my passport,...

I arrived in Fossacesia in time for il raccolto, the olive harvest. The harvest here came a bit later than usual, in part due to rain...

My triumphant second arrival at the house in the epoch of Covid proved to be a trifle short of entirely triumphant. It started with the...

After weeks of dread prior to my departure — dread that I wouldn’t have the right Covid documents to enter Italy or get back into New...

Well, after 19 months away, I landed on Italian soil this morning. I must admit I wasn’t really looking forward to this trip because I’ve...

As I've mentioned earlier, Italians love to scold. They'll shake their heads, wag their fingers, cluck their tongues at you for all kinds...

I've just been looking through old notes about my experiences years ago in Florence, when I took an 8-week crash course in Italian...

My visit to Fossacesia this fall was full of wonderful surprises. The surprise of having friends here who only months ago were strangers...

Well, I’m just back from 12 days in Fossacesia and recovered from a 24-hour post-flight bug. (Thanks again, bacterial convention that is...

This unusual and simple pasta dish is one of my favorites. There’s a bit of Moorish influence in the Italian kitchen, and the Abruzzo...

On Wednesday morning, I had a tea date at my home with Angela, a Manchester native who now lives in nearby Torino di Sangro. She arrived...

Well, life got in the way of posting over these last weeks, so I’m picking up again with my July trip. Sorry that it qualifies now as a...

Usually, you can count on July in Italy to bring 31 days of sun. Not this year. On July 10th, I took a pullman from Rome to Pescara,...

It's a kick to meet expats and hear about their towns and experiences. I'd found Mark, a transplant from Seattle only two years ago, in...

Festooned as it is with ivy and bougainvillea (or some other flower I've decided to call bougainvillea) and packed as it is with cool...