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 o...

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 sho...

Well, friends, Romans, and others who get the idea... I’ve shamefully neglected this blog for weeks, in part because I’ve been low on mat...

“Is there a train called an expresso here?,” the American 20-something shouted at the woman behind the ticket window at the Santa Lucia s...

The first and only time I visited Genoa prior to my stop there a few weeks ago, I had the distinct impression of a sinister city; positiv...

When I rolled into Venice Tuesday evening, so did the fog. The moody atmosphere it created seemed just right for photographing the Bridge...

The Nativity Scene There’s no place like Rome for a nativity scene, called in Italian a presepio or presepe. Both terms are correct, acco...

“…For I think there can be nothing else in the world so full of glittering and exquisite surprise as that first glimpse of Venice which t...

I’ll be going to Italy for several weeks right after Christmas. I’ll fly into Rome and spend a few days there and continue on to Genoa an...

Check out this image! This is the shadow thrown by the statue of Neptune built to represent Pope Pius IV in Bologna’s Piazza del Nettuno....