Can’t believe that in 72 hours I’ll be back in the U.S. On one hand, it seems as if this month has flown by, and on the other hand, it seems as if it has been six months since the first time I drove down the country road to our rented villa. We have become […]

I can’t believe that I’ve been in Italy 20 days and I have yet to set foot in a church. Mom likes to tease me by noting that, “For a person who never goes to church at home, you sure do like to visit them when we are traveling.” She’s right. And do you know […]

This week’s highlight had to be our pasta-making class. We returned to Massimo and Cecilia’s lovely restaurant, Osteria La Gramola in the heart of the small town of Tavernelle Val di Pesa on Wednesday to learn to make authentic pasta. My takeaway: I’m never buying dried pasta again. For this class we were joined by two […]

We said “farewell” to Louise on Saturday, and picked up Deborah from the Florence airport on Sunday. And on Monday we spent an interesting and informative afternoon learning how to make marbled paper. It was actually Deborah’s idea. I had no inkling that this was a thing, and that Florence was known for it. But […]

After our dramatic arrival on the day of the Acqua Alta, I’m afraid the remainder of our stay in Venice was quite conventional. The city was beautiful, the food was excellent, and the main sights were packed with tourists following a guide bearing a red flag, yellow umbrella, stuffed Minion on a stick…you name it. […]

We arrived in Venice at high tide, in the midst of torrential rain, and on a day when the city was experiencing the highest water levels since 1966. “Acqua Alta” (high water) is what the locals call it. And they probably use some profanity, too, because the disruption of the water levels, plus the confused […]

The olive trees are everywhere you look — they cover the hillsides of Chianti, line the streets of the small towns, decorate the gardens of the ancient villas and border the vineyards all over this region. Over the course of our first week here, we have learned the importance of olive oil to the Chianti […]

It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows Louise, mom and me that we LOVE food. We love cooking it. We love eating it. We love serving it. We love talking about it. And we LOOOOVE learning how to cook new things. So when we began to plan this trip, an Italian cooking […]

The first big highlight of our Tuscan adventure occurred on Tuesday: We took a private, all-day tour of the Chianti wine and olive region with a local guide. Miriam, a French/Italian who grew up in Livorno on the east coast and spent a great deal of her young life in Paris, showed up in the […]