Happy Easter – Buona Pasqua (in Italian, if you couldn’t deduce that ☺)
We are in Italy and alone. I feel like I should feel sad or lonely, but I don’t. And that in itself has me reflecting, because Easter hasn’t felt like much of a holiday to me for a long time.
And yet here I am, in the hills of Tuscany on Easter morning.
When I was a kid, I went to Catholic school—St. Brendan’s in Brooklyn, New York. I loved Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday all the way through Easter and the vacation week that followed.
It wasn’t because of Jesus, exactly, or even religion. I loved the tradition, the pomp, the feeling that spring was on its way, the dressing up.
Being in Catholic school made it all feel special. The church was right next to the school, and for religion class we were often inside—looking around, practicing music, getting familiar with it. I knew what it looked like during Mass and in between. I loved how, in preparation for Easter, everything got cleaned and polished. The priests, who lived in the rectory on the block and were always kind and involved, would bring out their special robes. I had a crush on one of the younger priests—Father Michael.
Starting on Palm Sunday, the church was all dolled up. There were special Masses all week that were different and, to me, kind of fun—even if the topic was somber. For the short time I was in the youth choir, there were lots of practices and lots of reasons to go to church and hang out with my friends. By Wednesday of Holy Week we had a half day, and then were off for the next week and a half. As a kid, that felt magical.
Easter itself was always a little anticlimactic. The build-up was over. But there were egg hunts around the apartment, Easter baskets, and those gigantic Italian chocolate eggs my dad always found for my brothers and me—each with a toy inside. The toy was never anything special, but as a kid, any toy lit up my heart.
When we moved from Brooklyn to Long Island in middle school, Easter and Holy Week were never quite the same. I went to public school and didn’t spend time around church anymore. We still went to Mass on Easter, but we became the kind of Catholics who mostly showed up on Christmas and Easter. Going to church now required a car instead of a three-block walk, and we didn’t know anyone there.
Still, Easter was fun. We colored eggs, got baskets, received those chocolate eggs from my dad, gathered with extended family, and had a special meal that included rabbit—yes, rabbit, like the Easter bunny.
Years went by. I grew up and had children young. Until then, I hadn’t really experienced Easter without kids involved—either being one or having them. It was always about eggs, bread, a great meal, and extended family. Holy Week still carried that feeling of something special, even though I was no longer part of church festivities and rarely attended them.
And even though I no longer got those giant, mostly hollow chocolate eggs, my father always made sure my kids and their cousins did. I’m not even sure if the toy was still inside—my kids might know. What I do remember is trying to get the egg home intact and usually finding it cracked from the car ride. It always felt like too much chocolate, so I’d break it into smaller pieces, freeze it, and use it later for cookies or some other dessert in the spring.
It wasn’t until I got divorced and the family split up that Easter really started to lose its shape. Different traditions. Not always having the kids. The standard divorce agreement doesn’t even count Easter as a holiday.
And as I got older, I started to notice that Easter isn’t really considered a holiday at all. It falls on a Sunday, so there’s no time off from work. Even people who work that day don’t get special pay like they do on actual holidays. In the United States, Easter comes with plenty of fun—egg hunts, baskets, the Easter bunny—but the day itself doesn’t carry the same weight. It feels more like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
Over time, it started to feel less special. Holy Week stopped registering, the kids never really loved it, and somewhere along the way it became just another Sunday—one where I might text people, but didn’t make plans or go to church. Not because I didn’t want to, exactly, but because I’d feel like a total hypocrite showing up.
My father, who passed away last August, always loved Easter. Being here now, in his mother country, I can see it from his perspective. It feels like a bigger deal here—no Easter bunny, no egg hunts—but the bakeries are full, and those giant hollow eggs he always brought us are everywhere.
I can’t help but look at them and tear up a bit. He wasn’t always my favorite person, but once he was just a young boy excited about chocolate and toys like the rest of us. That’s what he passed on.
Those eggs feel different to me now.
And yet this morning, I sit far from family in the hills of Tuscany. An Italian sauce simmers on the stove. I hear birds outside. Soon we’ll pack up lunch and head down to the pool to celebrate Pasqua with other expats who also have no family here.
Today—between the sauce simmering, the quiet hills, and sharing pranzo with others who are also far from home—I feel something I haven’t felt in a long time.
Not the old version of Easter. But something just as real.
Another week under our belt. This was another week about settling into a routine. We had some online work to do. We had a few calls. We did some shopping. Our house is now fully set up, and we can find our way around town pretty well. Nothing especially blog-worthy.
We did take time to adopt one of the rituals of Italian life: Market Day. Most towns in Italy have one, and Italian markets are much more than the typical “farmers market” we see in the U.S. To visualize an Italian market day, picture a good-sized farmers market combined with some food trucks and Walmart spreading all its goods out on tables and trucks in the town square. Market day is as much about shopping for cheap clothes, linens, and kitchenware as it is about artisanal cheese and organic broccoli rabe. You can even buy dog beds. Our town’s market day is Tuesday from 8:30 to 1:00. We took Koji, who now loves markets, and did a good amount of shopping for things we needed around the house. But we made the mistake of then heading to the main grocery store in town, Coop, and doing our weekly shop. This was simply too much shopping and stimulation for one of us (EA). We came home tired and a bit cranky—but well stocked for the week.
This was also a week for exploring our immediate surroundings. We live on a hill, surrounded by more hills. There are farms all around. A flock of sheep grazes in the valley below. There are horses, donkeys, and chickens nearby, as well as the ever-present olive groves and vineyards. Every road is either straight up or straight down. The road leading up to our house is so steep that cars, bikes, and even walking dogs all struggle to make it up. But despite the hills, exploring the area on foot has been fun. There are multiple little streets—paved and dirt—leading to hilltop clusters of farms and houses in all directions.
Esterina explored the area by taking really long runs—one was 90 minutes this week. While she doesn’t intend to be out so long, once she gets out there she keeps seeing roads—either on the map or en route—she wants to explore. She’s always beat when she gets back home, but always has new vistas to describe and a rich collection of sights and sounds to process.
New running shoes help. Somehow, she left her running shoes at home and had to buy multiple pairs—cost escalating with each new purchase—before landing on one that felt cushioned and supportive. Sometimes you do get what you pay for. Daren started exploring the surroundings more seriously on his bike. The hills and narrow roads pose a challenge, but it’s also a great way to explore the immediate area more closely.
We had our first major storm this week: two days of heavy, cold wind and rain. The house shook. The doors and windows were drafty. It was so loud that Koji—previously unwilling to hike up the stairs to the second floor—ended up at our bedside in the middle of the night. He was so scared by the noise that he decided to relocate to our bedroom for safety and security.
We’ve decided to work in a mix of day trips, long weekends, and more substantial trips over the next year, with a goal of exploring every corner of Italy. This week we took a day trip on Saturday. Val d’Orcia is in the southern part of Tuscany, and it is home to some of the most iconic scenery in the region. If you’ve seen movies or photos featuring stately rows of cypress trees, hilltop walled cities, rolling hills, fields of green, and ancient stone farmhouses, they were probably filmed in Val d’Orcia.
This region is about 90 minutes from our home, so we headed out on a road trip with a rough route mapped out to take us through the most beautiful scenery and to some of the most picturesque towns. Our first stop was San Quirico d’Orcia, a small town with ancient walls, a beautiful piazza, and a church built in the 11th century. We spent an hour sitting outside at a café, having a light lunch, chatting, and drinking coffee in the main square. Next stop was Bagno Vignoni, an ancient hot springs/thermal bath used since Etruscan times for soaking and healing. Last stop was Pienza, described as the “Jewel of the Val d’Orcia.” It was indeed a jewel.
It’s always a worry that overblown descriptions of beautiful places will leave us disappointed, but that wasn’t the case with Pienza. The beauty exceeded our expectations. Perched high on a hilltop overlooking green fields and rolling hills that extended to the horizon, Pienza was stunning: ancient stone walls and buildings, a Renaissance cathedral, lovely shops and cafés, and some outstanding local products like Pecorino di Val d’Orcia (cheese). We spent several hours strolling the walls, exploring the shops, and taking in the breathtaking views over the valley below. It helped that the weather was perfect—about 60 degrees and bright blue skies.
We’d like to say that the day ended on a high note with a great meal and a relaxing evening. But reality needed to reassert itself after a magical day. This isn’t a storybook—it’s real life. Things can’t be too perfect. After taking in all the sights in Pienza, we decided to head home, order takeout, and watch a movie. This had been a standard ritual back home, usually on Friday or Saturday night. And takeout meant Indian food.
We were very excited to find that Italy has its own version of Uber Eats (called Deliveroo), and on Deliveroo there was Indian food: Tandoori and Curry House in nearby San Giovanni. We placed our standard order: samosas, garlic naan, chicken tikka masala, and saag paneer, with kheer (rice pudding) for dessert. We laid out a tablecloth on our coffee table for some meal-in-front-of-the-TV dining and waited. And waited. And waited. It took well over an hour for the order to arrive. By then it was nearly 8:30 p.m. “Hangry” summarizes the mood.
When it finally arrived, we discovered that Indian food—at least in Italy—doesn’t come with rice unless you order it (we didn’t). So add 20 minutes to whip up some rice. Finally, time to eat… the most disgusting food we’ve ever tasted. It looked vaguely like Indian food, but there the similarities ended. Imagine chicken cubes with some onions and a bottle of Ragu tomato sauce. And a handful of frozen spinach thawed in the microwave and mixed with cubes of paneer cheese.
Esterina bailed and had popcorn. Daren suffered through the horror. And then the movie was terrible. We chose Mary Supreme, and after a dog burst into flame halfway through, we looked at each other and said, “Why are we watching this?”
How silly. None of this matters in the least, but when you change up your life and make a big move, there is a learning curve. Some things don’t translate well. And if you expect to replicate routines and comforts of home, you may be disappointed. But who could complain even slightly after a day exploring one of the most beautiful places on earth? Even we couldn’t really manage it—other than to laugh and go to bed with a smirk and a reminder that nothing is perfect.
Another week under our belt. This was another week about settling into a routine. We had some online work to do. We had a few calls. We did some shopping. Our house is now fully set up, and we can find our way around town pretty well. Nothing especially blog-worthy.
We did take time to adopt one of the rituals of Italian life: Market Day. Most towns in Italy have one, and Italian markets are much more than the typical “farmers market” we see in the U.S. To visualize an Italian market day, picture a good-sized farmers market combined with some food trucks and Walmart spreading all its goods out on tables and trucks in the town square. Market day is as much about shopping for cheap clothes, linens, and kitchenware as it is about artisanal cheese and organic broccoli rabe. You can even buy dog beds. Our town’s market day is Tuesday from 8:30 to 1:00. We took Koji, who now loves markets, and did a good amount of shopping for things we needed around the house. But we made the mistake of then heading to the main grocery store in town, Coop, and doing our weekly shop. This was simply too much shopping and stimulation for one of us (EA). We came home tired and a bit cranky—but well stocked for the week.
This was also a week for exploring our immediate surroundings. We live on a hill, surrounded by more hills. There are farms all around. A flock of sheep grazes in the valley below. There are horses, donkeys, and chickens nearby, as well as the ever-present olive groves and vineyards. Every road is either straight up or straight down. The road leading up to our house is so steep that cars, bikes, and even walking dogs all struggle to make it up. But despite the hills, exploring the area on foot has been fun. There are multiple little streets—paved and dirt—leading to hilltop clusters of farms and houses in all directions.
Esterina explored the area by taking really long runs—one was 90 minutes this week. While she doesn’t intend to be out so long, once she gets out there she keeps seeing roads—either on the map or en route—she wants to explore. She’s always beat when she gets back home, but always has new vistas to describe and a rich collection of sights and sounds to process.
New running shoes help. Somehow, she left her running shoes at home and had to buy multiple pairs—cost escalating with each new purchase—before landing on one that felt cushioned and supportive. Sometimes you do get what you pay for. Daren started exploring the surroundings more seriously on his bike. The hills and narrow roads pose a challenge, but it’s also a great way to explore the immediate area more closely.
We had our first major storm this week: two days of heavy, cold wind and rain. The house shook. The doors and windows were drafty. It was so loud that Koji—previously unwilling to hike up the stairs to the second floor—ended up at our bedside in the middle of the night. He was so scared by the noise that he decided to relocate to our bedroom for safety and security.
We’ve decided to work in a mix of day trips, long weekends, and more substantial trips over the next year, with a goal of exploring every corner of Italy. This week we took a day trip on Saturday. Val d’Orcia is in the southern part of Tuscany, and it is home to some of the most iconic scenery in the region. If you’ve seen movies or photos featuring stately rows of cypress trees, hilltop walled cities, rolling hills, fields of green, and ancient stone farmhouses, they were probably filmed in Val d’Orcia.
This region is about 90 minutes from our home, so we headed out on a road trip with a rough route mapped out to take us through the most beautiful scenery and to some of the most picturesque towns. Our first stop was San Quirico d’Orcia, a small town with ancient walls, a beautiful piazza, and a church built in the 11th century. We spent an hour sitting outside at a café, having a light lunch, chatting, and drinking coffee in the main square. Next stop was Bagno Vignoni, an ancient hot springs/thermal bath used since Etruscan times for soaking and healing. Last stop was Pienza, described as the “Jewel of the Val d’Orcia.” It was indeed a jewel.
It’s always a worry that overblown descriptions of beautiful places will leave us disappointed, but that wasn’t the case with Pienza. The beauty exceeded our expectations. Perched high on a hilltop overlooking green fields and rolling hills that extended to the horizon, Pienza was stunning: ancient stone walls and buildings, a Renaissance cathedral, lovely shops and cafés, and some outstanding local products like Pecorino di Val d’Orcia (cheese). We spent several hours strolling the walls, exploring the shops, and taking in the breathtaking views over the valley below. It helped that the weather was perfect—about 60 degrees and bright blue skies.
We’d like to say that the day ended on a high note with a great meal and a relaxing evening. But reality needed to reassert itself after a magical day. This isn’t a storybook—it’s real life. Things can’t be too perfect. After taking in all the sights in Pienza, we decided to head home, order takeout, and watch a movie. This had been a standard ritual back home, usually on Friday or Saturday night. And takeout meant Indian food.
We were very excited to find that Italy has its own version of Uber Eats (called Deliveroo), and on Deliveroo there was Indian food: Tandoori and Curry House in nearby San Giovanni. We placed our standard order: samosas, garlic naan, chicken tikka masala, and saag paneer, with kheer (rice pudding) for dessert. We laid out a tablecloth on our coffee table for some meal-in-front-of-the-TV dining and waited. And waited. And waited. It took well over an hour for the order to arrive. By then it was nearly 8:30 p.m. “Hangry” summarizes the mood.
When it finally arrived, we discovered that Indian food—at least in Italy—doesn’t come with rice unless you order it (we didn’t). So add 20 minutes to whip up some rice. Finally, time to eat… the most disgusting food we’ve ever tasted. It looked vaguely like Indian food, but there the similarities ended. Imagine chicken cubes with some onions and a bottle of Ragu tomato sauce. And a handful of frozen spinach thawed in the microwave and mixed with cubes of paneer cheese.
Esterina bailed and had popcorn. Daren suffered through the horror. And then the movie was terrible. We chose Mary Supreme, and after a dog burst into flame halfway through, we looked at each other and said, “Why are we watching this?”
How silly. None of this matters in the least, but when you change up your life and make a big move, there is a learning curve. Some things don’t translate well. And if you expect to replicate routines and comforts of home, you may be disappointed. But who could complain even slightly after a day exploring one of the most beautiful places on earth? Even we couldn’t really manage it—other than to laugh and go to bed with a smirk and a reminder that nothing is perfect.
This week was about settling in. We’ve now been in Italy for four weeks, and it feels like we are starting to get the hang of things. We bought the Italian version of an EZ Pass and felt very proud breezing through the tolls without stopping, just like back home. We shopped at a local market for housewares and some food. We took Koji to establish care with a new veterinarian, and we got a membership card at our favorite grocery store.
Mastering some of these day-to-day basics has been rewarding and has helped us start to feel settled, but it’s also given me a chance to think about how different it can be to be “settled” in a new country. Italy is a modern, Western country with a language and culture that overlap with ours in so many ways. There are many similarities to life back home. But when you step back and look at the mechanics of daily life—the minute components that make up our activities and routines—differences emerge that require some adjustment.
A big contributor to these differences is history and the varied ways our societies have developed. I would describe Italy as a thoroughly modern country, as advanced in consumer technology and infrastructure as the US, but superimposed on a physical environment that was built, in some cases, over a thousand years ago. Yesterday we looked upon a beautiful church in the small town of San Quirico d’Orcia that was built in the 1100s. Buildings are old. Roads are old.
Even the location of towns is different. Have you ever seen a town in the US built on top of a hill? Or encircled with large stone walls? Likely not. In the US, most towns and cities are in valleys or along major rivers. That’s probably because American towns were not built with the need to defend against raiding barbarians in the 500s. However, Italy is filled with walled-in, hilltop towns. When you gaze out over the Tuscan countryside, you see hills everywhere capped with beautiful towns. Hilltop towns are one of the best things about Italy. Today they are beautiful and historic. In ages past they were ideal for hurling rocks, arrows, and spears down upon invading hordes and keeping them at bay. Such a need simply didn’t exist when Albany or Peoria were founded.
This geography and history drive some of the most obvious differences between living in Italy and living in the US. You drive up incredibly steep hills to reach many towns and cities. Roads are very narrow. Navigating through cities—a topic I explored in more detail in a previous blog—is fraught with challenges: squeezing through tight passages and bumping over cobblestones. It simply can’t be done with a large vehicle. Cities were designed and laid out in the Middle Ages or earlier. They certainly were not built with SUVs and 4x4s in mind. An 18-wheeler will never deliver supplies to a business in an Italian town.
Which is why Italians, almost without exception, drive very small cars. There are models that simply don’t exist in the US, like Opel, Citroën, the Mercedes A-Class, or the BMW 1 Series. Fiat 500s and Pandas are among the most common vehicles, and they are rarely seen in the US except as novelties for a few Italophiles. There are no Chevy Tahoes. There are virtually no pickup trucks.
Parking is very different too. It is rare to drive up to a store, pull into a well-apportioned parking lot, and walk in to buy your shampoo. While some stores have parking lots, most are on city streets requiring parallel parking, or parking in a parcheggio (parking lot) outside of town. Our favorite very large, very well-stocked grocery store does have a nice parking lot—but the spaces are really tight and narrow. Our car, with its range of cameras and sensors, sounds like a horror movie as beeps, tones, and progressively dire chimes ring out just to pull into a space at the Coop.
In addition to the physical differences, there are others that have taken more time to recognize. There is a cadence and schedule in Italy to which we are still adapting. Much of it centers around eating. We are breakfast eaters and always start the day with a decent, healthy meal. That hasn’t been an issue since we tend to eat at home or, when traveling, at a hotel with a breakfast buffet catering to tourists. We’ve been able to find our favorites—oatmeal, cereal, eggs, cottage cheese, and yogurt—without difficulty.
For Italians, breakfast is espresso or cappuccino and a pastry. A breakfast like this would leave us both cranky and barely functional. The first real meal in Italy is pranzo (lunch). Lunch starts at 1 p.m. and can run from 1–3. It is considered the main meal of the day. Interestingly, outside tourist towns, everything closes at 1 p.m. until as late as 4 p.m. to allow time for pranzo. This means that if you have shopping or errands—or even just want to window shop in a new town—you need to get it done in the morning. By 1 p.m., you should be seated in a restaurant or, if you are like us and prefer a sandwich at noon, find a way to occupy yourself from 1–4.
Dinner is where we’ve struggled the most. Stores and businesses reopen, and whole towns seem to awaken around 4 p.m. But if you are looking for dinner at six, you’d best cook it at home. Most restaurants won’t even offer seating until seven. And you’ll often be the only one there until 8 p.m. If you are like us and prefer to be heading toward reading and bed around 9:30, you’ll be doing so with a full stomach—which is a prescription for heartburn and a bad night’s sleep.
We haven’t sorted out how to adapt to this new cadence yet. When we are home, it’s easy. We make our own food and eat when we prefer. If we have errands to run, we do them in the morning or after four. It’s more of a challenge when we are traveling and sightseeing. Then you are more at the mercy of the Italian schedule.
One thing we’ve discovered that offers a potential solution is the café. Every town has at least one, usually in the piazza, with a mix of indoor and outdoor seating, a display case of sandwiches and pastries, a commercial espresso machine, and a full bar. Most have decent non-alcoholic options as well. These places serve as a bridge between the main meals. Italians seem to use them for coffee and pastries in the morning, and for drinks and light snacks in the late afternoon. Aperitivo hour, which picks up around 5 p.m., finds people sipping Aperol spritzes or glasses of wine. For us, these are great places to get a bite at noon, or—if we’ve had a full pranzo—a lighter dinner at 6 or 7. We’re still working it out. I’ve been surprised at how out of sync we feel based on these differences in schedules.
Other notable differences: dogs are everywhere. It’s quite a shock initially to walk into a restaurant and see dogs at their owners’ feet under the table. You’ll see them in grocery stores, clothing stores, or pretty much anywhere else. Dogs are extremely popular in Italy and accepted nearly everywhere. We read that dogs—even large ones like Koji—can accompany you on trains. The Italian airline ITA just adopted a policy allowing you to purchase a “seat” for your large dog on domestic flights. It’s been nice for us in that we can bring Koji on most outings and he gets to explore parts of the world his dog mind could previously not have imagined—like a grocery store, a cheese shop, or, yesterday, a china shop (a bit dicey). It does lead to more barking.
Which brings me to another subtle difference: the ambient background noise of daily life in Italian towns. Barking dogs are everywhere. It’s rare to take a walk without hearing them. Chimes are a constant presence. These are brass bells, not electronic imitations. Every town has bell towers atop its churches and municipal buildings. They ring the hours and sometimes the half and quarter hour. At Mass time the bells ring out all over town. More subtly—perhaps unique to our location on a hill in Tuscany—on my morning walks I can hear the distant tinkling of bells around the necks of the sheep in the valley below. These sounds may not even register at first, but they form part of the rich tapestry of life in Italy.
I could write about many other large and small differences—like the confusing electrical outlets (10A, 16A, two-prong, three-prong, large prong, small prong—I bought three different extension cords before getting the right one), or the challenge of finding over-the-counter meds (you buy them in surprisingly small quantities at a pharmacy). I could write a whole blog about traffic circles, which are a huge improvement over traffic lights and stop signs.
But the more important point is that daily life is shaped by history in ways we rarely notice when we’re at home. The routines, the infrastructure, the timing of meals, even the size of our cars—all of it reflects decisions made long before we arrived. Living somewhere new makes those invisible assumptions visible.
And that, I think, is what it really means to begin settling in. Not just learning where to shop or how to pay tolls, but slowly recalibrating your expectations of how a day unfolds. You stop measuring everything against home. You start noticing the logic in the differences. And eventually, without quite realizing when it happened, the unfamiliar rhythms begin to feel less like disruptions — and more like another perfectly reasonable way to live.
Thanks for taking the time to read. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe for future updates.
Back in 2010, when Daren and I first got together, I remember my brother Mario talking about a theory he had about slowing down life. At the time I was only 34 and thought I was so old, and of course—like all of us—I thought slowing life down sounded important. I won’t go into Mario’s really cool theory here, but it does involve shaking things up and changing your baseline.
Why am I saying this? Because as I sit down this Saturday morning to write about our experience in Italy, I’m floored that it’s only been a week. It feels like so much longer—and that, my friends, is a good thing. It feels like a month has gone by in a week, and at least for this week my life has slowed down.
One truly amazing thing for me that began this week was my sleep. For nearly the past year—ever since I first started thinking early retirement might be possible—I’ve been waking in the middle of the night and struggling for at least an hour or two to fall back asleep. At first it was the possibility that early retirement could happen. Then it was waiting for the VA’s interpretation of early retirement rules. Then the paperwork finally came out. I applied. I was approved. I had two weeks left of work.
Then my father-in-law got into a bike accident. There were issues with one of the kids. My father had his last hospital visit and subsequently passed away. And then we realized that with my retirement, Daren could also retire—and we decided that we wanted to move to Italy so I could pursue Italian citizenship and we could experience at least a year living in another country.
Daren’s retirement. Kid issues. Turning 50. All the excitement, setbacks, and obstacles had me waking up around 2:30 every night.
Until this week.
It’s been at least five nights now that I’ve slept soundly. I cannot tell you how refreshing this is. I feel like a new person.
Slower time—and a good night’s sleep—will do that to you.
So what have we been up to?
Saturday, March 7
We last blogged last Saturday.
That afternoon, after sending the link to our blog out to friends, loved ones, and social media, we went for a hike. Daren had been exploring more on foot than I had, so we took the dog, donned the hiking boots, and set out to walk.
There are multiple hiking trails right off our property—some literally starting on the property and others just down the street. The day was absolutely gorgeous. Spring is blooming here: daffodils, flowering trees, and tons of tiny wildflowers everywhere—on the walls, alongside roads, in the grass. It’s so pretty. Everything feels new to us and new to the season. It almost feels like providence that we arrived just as the season is opening up for a new experience.
Side note: Last week we ended up shopping every single day. While still in the U.S. I made a really good list of what we’d need to purchase upon arrival (a lot more than you’d think). Right before we left I placed a large Amazon order for items we knew we needed immediately—dog food, a dog bed, vitamins—things for which we wouldn’t want to spend much time comparison-shopping.
After that, though, we wanted to shop locally as much as possible.
We both love to cook, and when you start from scratch with spices, ingredients, and kitchen implements—bowls, measuring cups, a hand mixer, rubber spatulas, just to name a few—you end up needing an obscene amount of things. Cooking, health, and baking are important to us, so it was worth the trips and expense, but it definitely took some doing.
Back to Saturday… after hiking and feeling refreshed, we (not surprisingly) needed to shop again. We left the dog at home this time and decided we’d like to go out for gelato for the first time before shopping.
It was about 2 p.m., and we hadn’t really explored our own town yet, so we headed toward the town square. What we’ve been repeatedly surprised by is how everything closes in the middle of the afternoon. This is no joke. Even the gelato shop was closed!
Everything opens again around 3:30 or 4, but there is truly almost nothing open in the middle of the day. There are certain assumptions in the U.S. about how Europeans—and Italians in particular—live. Some of them are absolutely true. This midday closure, at least outside tourist areas, is definitely one of them.
We ended up at a pasticceria instead and had coffee (mini coffees—the norm here) and pastries before heading to the grocery store.
And whoa—the grocery store was a madhouse. A true scene. This must be when all the locals who work during the day do their shopping. There was no parking where we had parked before, but we eventually found an underground parking area we didn’t know existed.
It was chaotic and kind of fun to be in the middle of the bustle of a Saturday early evening in Italy. By this point we’d been in enough stores to know the lay of the land, so we grabbed what we needed without too much fuss and headed home.
From Daren:
That evening we went out to dinner for the first time right up the street at a place that serves pizza just once a week, and by up the street we mean up a very steep hill. We had learned from our landlord that about a quarter of a mile from our home there is a small community hall or meeting room on the second floor above a small store. Apparently, many of the local “nonnas” (grandmothers), come together every Saturday to make and serve pizza in the community room. We were somewhat suspicious and uncertain how this might work. But after parking the lot across the street we found things exactly as described: a large community room filled with local Italian families, a squad of elderly men serving tables, and a large kitchen with a team of elderly women making pizza. There was a menu, a range of drink and pizza options, and after about a 30 minute wait after ordering, two tasty pizzas to eat. We are still sorting out what “pizza” means in Italy. It’s not clear how much regional variation there is, but so far “pizza” has meant something round with cheese, tomatoes and toppings. While this sounds a lot like home, the similarities end with the shape and the components. What has been strikingly different has been the width of the crust. This pizza, and others we’ve had since, are incredibly thin. More like flatbread. And no Italian pizza is ever cut into slices, so you tackle it with a knife and fork and later use your hands after working it down into smaller sections. Whether similar or not, the pizza is delicious. We most enjoyed being surrounded by local Italians talking, laughing, gesticulating, and clearly enjoying a shared meal in their community. Notably, there were very few phones visible. Conversation and camaraderie were preferred over scrolling!
Hiking
Sunday, March 8
Now that the house and shopping basics were set up, we were ready to venture outside of town and see what was around us.
I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.
We went to Greve in Chianti first, and then right down the road to a small hilltop town that was ridiculously picturesque. These two small towns in the heart of Chianti were packed with Tuscan/Medieval charm and we felt like we’d taken a trip back in time as we surveyed the city walls and walked through the central piazza.
March 8 was International Women’s Day, and it’s a much bigger deal here than in the U.S. Mimosa flowers were everywhere. There were free drinks for women and all kinds of celebrations happening wherever we went.
On the way home we (yet again) needed to grab a few things from the grocery store. We stopped at Lidl—the only store open past about 1 p.m. on Sundays. We had gone there the previous week and vowed never to shop there again, but this time we were pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to find things and how inexpensive everything was. It takes some time getting the lay of the land in a new grocery store and a new country!
We will be back. Both to Greve and Lidls that is!
Take a close look at Amazon box on the door, truly up a hill in the middle of no where! haha
Monday, March 9
We had so much fun visiting a new town on Sunday that we decided to do it again. This time the destination was Arezzo, by train.
Again, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.
I was tired—just beat. I’m not sure if it was the Zyrtec I’m taking for allergies or if I’m finally unwinding now that we’re here and settled, but I was too tired to really enjoy the city. Because of that, I had no interest in exploring the art or churches. Daren enjoyed it very, very much.
I found the city a little “meh.” The lunch we had was terrible. It wasn’t my favorite day or my favorite place—but to be fair, I didn’t really give it a chance either. I was just spent.
And just like that – Womens Day is over…
Tuesday, March 10
We needed to be home Tuesday (blessedly) for our washer and dryer delivery and a conference call related to our new consulting LLC.
I headed out on my first solo run. I jogged and walked (lots of hills!) for 5.6 miles and oh my gosh it was exhilarating. I hadn’t exercised in well over a week and it felt amazing. And the scenery!
I was out for 75 minutes and honestly didn’t want to come back.
When I got home the washer and dryer had arrived—yay! Laundry again.
From past Airbnb experiences in Europe I remembered that laundry machines were not the same as in the U.S., so I was prepared for very low-functioning machines that would take forever, especially since we bought inexpensive models. But we were pleasantly surprised! Nowhere near as large or powerful as what we had back home, but much better than I expected. Daren was worried that without 220 voltage electricity as we have in the US for dryers, we’d never get the clothes dry. But much to our surprise, after about 1.5 hours, we had a fully dry load of laundry.
Overall—a great surprise.
Wednesday, March 11
This was a day of work and figuring out how we want our life here to look.
Since I stopped working last June, I’d developed a routine that loosely mirrored Daren’s workday—exercise, showering, and daily activities earlier in the day while he worked. He worked right up until the day before we left, so now that we’re here and somewhat settled, we needed to build a new kind of day where we’re both home.
At first we kind of assumed we’d each keep doing our same routines. But it quickly became clear that wasn’t really going to work.
So like the two weird geeks we are, we grabbed paper, pens, and a computer and headed to a little café with Wi-Fi to try to level-set our expectations about what a typical day might look like.
I’d love to tell you we figured it all out.
But instead we got very jazzed about traveling and spent most of the time talking about all the places we want to visit while we’re on this side of the pond. We started mapping out what times of year would be best to visit certain places when we suddenly realized the time.
Another conference call was coming up, so we headed home. We need to revisit the conversation about a daily routine and still figure out the travel. No rush, we have time! It’s hard to get used to the concept, I’m sure we will but for now the idea of “no rush” is still incredibly novel.
Thursday, March 12
Another day at home. No meetings. Lots of computer work.
And another long run for me.
I thought the first run might have been the magical one—the “first time back” effect—but this run was even better. I took a slightly different route and tried to dodge some inevitable rain. It wasn’t the sunniest day, but I was completely in the moment and in awe of the scenery.
I took a ton of photos.
Which inspired me to come home and start playing around with editing them. After a warm shower and the need to rest my legs from the hills, that’s exactly what I did.
Daren also went for a run, and in the mid-afternoon we both ended up parked on the couch doing our own things. He read and I edited photos. It felt so nice to just be and to be creative that we abandoned the swordfish we had defrosting on the counter and decided instead to stay right where we were, order a pizza, and watch a movie.
Our first pizza delivery in Italy using “Deliveroo”, a European version of Uber eats delivered by scooter—smooth process and really different, but delicious.
Friday, March 13
And then yesterday—oh my.
We woke up leisurely, had breakfast and coffee, and then packed a day bag, ushered the dog into the back seat of the car, and headed out to San Gimignano.
The day was perfectly sunny and warm—about 15–16°C (in the 60s°F)—and the town was adorable. The walled city was full of tourists, but as I texted my friends back home, there’s a reason some places are touristy.
Lunch was phenomenal—exactly how I remember food in Tuscany from our first trip here ten years ago.
Afterward we stopped at a nature preserve. It honestly wasn’t the prettiest hike and probably not somewhere I’d recommend, but it was exhilarating to be out in nature after the bustle of tourists, a great lunch, and browsing through shops full of seriously beautiful things.
San Gimignano is just over an hour away. The drive there and back was just as beautiful as being there. I drove there and Daren drove back. We took different routes and each got the experience of navigating the hills and simply looking out the window.
The ride home was magical. The sun was setting while spring showers came and went, so the lighting was gorgeous. We played an 80s music mix and sang along, jokingly trying to translate lyrics into Italy, while driving through the hills, just feeling alive.
Dinner was simple—some appetizers with delicious local cheeses we had picked up earlier. Then we collapsed onto the sofa for another movie before heading to bed, truly satisfied and grateful for the experiences we’re lucky enough to be having.
We miss everyone back home. Feel free to comment here. Feel free to text us. Keep in touch please!
