Around Italy

Our latest adventure on Italian soil took my sisters Sheila and Rosie and me to Puglia, the beautiful and rocky region in the heel of the...

This May, nine of us descended upon, or should I say ascended to, or should I say stampeded into a lovely villa in the hilly Tuscan...

I've put on my thinking mask because I'm having second thoughts about Venice. Is it that the views have lost their magic? That I'm angry...

Okay, I'll admit it. That title is trying hard to be clever across two languages: In the Italian, "the beasts of Trieste" is a reference...

There’s a lot to say about nine days with five family members in such a stunning and storied spot as the Amalfi Coast. In the interest of...

From Pescara, Rosie and I dashed to the famous mosaic city of Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna, which I'd long wanted to visit. Ravenna once was...

(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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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

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;...

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,...

“…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...

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...

If you happen to be in Bologna in early 2019, you might want to look into this: Word on the street is that Abruzzese painter Gigino...

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....