We are sitting at breakfast this morning at a great hotel in the Sassi of Matera, Basilicata, getting ready to leave after two nights here.
Matera was one of the places I really wanted to visit while we were living in Italy. We’ve heard so many good things about it. It’s one of those places where, when you mention you’re thinking of going, someone inevitably says, “Oh my gosh, you HAVE to go!”
But I’ve been hearing that about so many places in Italy that I’ve learned not to go anywhere with particularly high expectations. Matera, though, lived up to the hype.
A Little About Matera
Matera is in Basilicata, the region tucked between Campania, Puglia and Calabria in southern Italy. What makes it so unusual are the Sassi, the ancient neighborhoods built into and around the rock along the side of a ravine.
People have lived in this area for an incredibly long time. There is evidence of human occupation going all the way back to the Paleolithic period, making Matera one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world. Over thousands of years, people took the natural caves here and expanded them, carving homes, churches, storage areas and cisterns directly into the soft stone. Eventually buildings were constructed in front of and on top of those caves, creating the maze of stone houses, stairways, alleys and terraces that you see today.
The result is hard to describe until you see it. A street can be the roof of the house below it. A doorway may lead into a room carved deep into the hillside. Churches disappear into the rock. Today, those same spaces hold hotels, restaurants, shops, homes and spas. The Sassi and the surrounding rupestrian churches have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993.
But Matera’s history isn’t entirely romantic. By the first half of the 20th century, many families in the Sassi were living in terrible conditions, often sharing their cave homes with livestock and without adequate sanitation or running water. In 1952, the Italian government passed legislation to relocate residents into newly built housing, and much of the Sassi was emptied during the 1950s. The ancient neighborhoods sat largely abandoned for decades before restoration efforts began bringing people back in the 1980s.
Today, the Sassi feel almost like a giant open-air museum that has come back to life. You can wander for hours through the old streets, but this isn’t a reconstructed historical attraction. You are walking through the actual caves, homes and passageways people used for centuries.
And you really can’t drive around the old part of the town. Access to the historic center is restricted, and even if you were allowed to drive here, I can’t imagine navigate these tiny stone streets in a car.
Arriving at the Busiest Time of the Year
We booked this trip about two and a half months ago, deciding Matera would make a great two-night stop on our way to see my family in Calabria. It wasn’t that far out of our way, so why not?
I was a little shocked — though I probably shouldn’t have been — by how difficult it was to find a place to stay both here and in Calabria. Then we remembered/learned when we were going: Ferragosto.
Ferragosto is officially August 15, the Feast of the Assumption and a national holiday in Italy, but the word also describes something much bigger culturally. August, and especially the weeks around Ferragosto, is when huge numbers of Italians take their summer vacations. Cities get quieter, businesses close, and people head to the beaches, mountains and holiday towns with their families. The stories about Italy shutting down in August aren’t exaggerated. So yes, of course hotels were booked!
The only hotel we could find in Matera that would also take a dog Koji’s size was the five-star Vetera Matera. Vetera is part of Gruppo Bellevue and is also a member of Relais & Châteaux, a collection of independent luxury hotels and restaurants around the world. We stayed at another Relais & Châteaux property in Norcia a couple of months ago and I fell in love.
I fear these experiences may have ruined me. Five-star hotels are very nice. Who knew?
Vetera itself fits perfectly into Matera because much of the property is incorporated into the old stone buildings and caves of the Sassi. Even the spa is carved into the rock.
The Drive South
We left our home in Tuscany around 6 a.m. Monday and drove south, making two stops along the way. We’ve come to love the Autogrill stops on Italian highways. The coffee is reliably good, and we really like the pastries and meals they serve.
With the August crowds I just described, the first Autogrill was out of our beloved Nutella cornetti — basically croissants stuffed with Nutella. Instead (poor us) we had to settle for pain au chocolat with our doppio macchiato. Holy cow, I love those stinking things too and am now fantasizing and hoping that there is an Autogrill on the way from here to Crotone today.
I griped early on about Italian coffee culture and the tiny sip of espresso. I still cannot embrace this tradition first thing in the morning. I need a big ol’ American cup of coffee. But I’ve come to really enjoy and sometimes (sometimes) look forward to an afternoon macchiato.And in the evening, a little espresso after dinner is divine.
Lunch was another Autogrill stop — just as busy and lots of fun.
Our First Look at Matera
When we arrived, we had to park outside the Sassi and call the hotel about 20 minutes ahead so they could send a car for us. The hotel car picked us up, and by the time we drove into the Sassi we were tired and hot, sitting in a car full of stuff with an excited giant dog squeezing his way around everything.
Check-in was leisurely, with someone showing us around the property and then our cave room (where our bags miraculously appeared). Most importantly, the room was blessedly air-conditioned and cool. The three of us — me, Daren and Koji — seemed to take one proverbial sigh before lying down for a while to cool off and adjust.
Koji was not too keen on going back outside anytime soon, so Daren and I slipped our shoes on and went exploring without him. We took the hotel elevator up to a terrace the receptionist had told us about, and there we got our first real look over the Sassi.
Wow. This was one of those rare times when the view actually was as good as everyone said it would be. And it was the first of many. We thought this one was good!
Next we set out to see the town. About three minutes after walking out the hotel door, I turned around and went back for sneakers with better grip.
Matera is built primarily from local calcarenite, a relatively soft limestone that could be excavated to create the caves and building blocks that form the Sassi. After centuries of wear, those stone streets and stairs are smooth in places — and a smidge slippery.
Take two. We were off.
Wandering the Sassi
It was about 4:30 in the afternoon, a time when we’ve learned that not many self-respecting Italians are out wandering around in August heat. There were enough other tourists that it didn’t feel like a ghost town, though. And the views!
Every corner seemed to open onto another cluster of stone buildings, caves, churches, staircases and terraces. You’d walk down one narrow alley, turn a corner and suddenly be looking across the ravine at the entire city.
That evening we had dinner at 7 — absurdly early by Italian standards — and then wandered through the city after dark. Matera was totally charged! The streets filled with people eating, walking and shopping. Lights came on throughout the Sassi, illuminating all those layers of stone houses across the hillside. The whole place had great energy. There was a string quartet playing at an open air bar high above the ravine, and the music filled the entire section of the city with heavenly music, adding another layer to a magical scene.
Day Two
The rest of our visit was equally slow and beautiful. Yesterday morning, after I did yoga and Daren walked Koji, we put on our sneakers and took a power walk around the ridge of the city before the sun made it too hot.
We came back, showered, had breakfast and then headed out again with Koji to explore the area with more of the shops. Yesterday was basically a repeat of the first with some more shop visits, plus one of the “see how the people lived in the caves” tourist museums; and Daren went to check out the cistern area. There isn’t a giant checklist of things we felt we needed to accomplish here. Matera itself is the thing to see.
Last night at dinner we met an American couple about our age who were here on their honeymoon. They were both on their second marriages, like us, and between them they have five adult children.
It was nice just to sit and speak English with other Americans for a while. It was also interesting listening to their impressions of Italy after being here for only a short time. I could hear in their observations some of the same assumptions we made when we first arrived, and it made me realize how much our own perspective has changed over the past several months. I think we all agreed that two days in Matera feels about right.
So this morning I’m sitting here at breakfast, looking out at this strange and beautiful stone city one last time, and I feel completely happy and satisfied with this stop.
We came. We wandered. We ate. We slept in a cave.
And now… off to Calabria.
Up before the sun today – then watching it come up this morning-
When Daren and I first got here to Italy five months ago, and Daren got the blogging bug (I’ve been blogging for over 10 years), we reframed my WordPress site around our Italy experience and created three areas on that page: My Experience/Posts, Daren’s Experience/Posts, and Our Travelogue.
If you haven’t seen it because you get the blog in your email, it’s EsterinaAnderson.com.
At first we did post separate things, but for a long time now we’ve pretty much only used the joint Travelogue section.
Why am I saying all this? Because this post is from me (Esterina) and belongs completely under the Esterina’s Posts button. This isn’t one of the posts we both edited together, so I don’t want to rope him into this.
We came to Italy to take a break from life and see how other people live.
When we first started tossing around the idea we are now living, the main goal was to step away after retirement, work on my citizenship, and see what happened. And that break is happening.
Our mornings are slow to start. Yoga, then coffee and the New York Times games together. Then often some exercise and computer work. We talk—a lot. Most of the day. We talk during meals, during errands, and on our many long car rides as we travel. This was the goal. To connect, ponder, and explore.
The conversation has shifted and changed since we got here. Initially we thought we might want to do NGO work, maybe in Africa or the EU. Citizenship certainly would open more doors for us to do those things. We also initially considered really ramping up and expanding our small consulting company. Those talks have now evolved into different conversations.
We talk about deep and spiritual things. We talk about how we want to spend the rest of our lives, who we want to be, and how much, if any, work we want to do for profit. We are doing a lot of reading for fun, but also a lot of reading about Life Part II and spirituality. The books we both read, whether novels or not, we talk about often for hours—how the characters behave, who or what they remind us of, and things the other person might not have considered. We talk about experiences we’ve had, both together and separately, and what we’d do differently now. We talk about the similarities and differences between the U.S. and Italy, what we like about each, and what we don’t like about each. We fuss over Koji. We talk about how we want to show up for the people we love.
These conversations have become really important and might just be a keystone of how, in years to come (assuming I’m lucky enough to have years to live), I look back on this time here.
I know from our blogs it probably looks like all fun, games, traveling, and bliss. But there is another side to what we’re doing. It’s not as glamorous, it’s hard to explain, and it has nothing to do with frescoes, churches, or sightseeing. It’s what happens in between, while we are shopping and going to the comune and to the veterinarian.
While I love traveling, the glitz and writing about it have fallen to the back burner for me. We’re mostly going to tourist cities, and for the most part they are very similar. Walled cities with souvenir shops, gelato, and churches. These places are indisputably beautiful, but they’re honestly starting to feel like a lot of the same. Luckily, our next few planned trips are a little more off the beaten path, and the places that aren’t will be with friends who are coming to visit.
In case I haven’t said it before (if you’ve talked to me, you’ve heard it!), I am really tired of Italian food, and it’s almost all we can get while traveling. Daren keeps writing that we eat different things whenever we go to cities, but we don’t go to cities very often. We used to eat Indian food at least once a week, and I think we’ve had it four times since we’ve been here. We can cook different things at home, but even that’s limited. The grocery stores are very large, but not as diverse as I expected.
I’m also really struggling with the cadence of life. The riposo is a bit of whiplash for me. From a non-Italian or non-Spanish perspective, it initially sounds cozy, romantic, relaxing, and family-oriented. Riposo (like a Spanish siesta) is the afternoon break when many businesses close for a few hours. It wasn’t created to inconvenience anyone. It grew out of a culture that values a long midday meal with family, stepping away during the hottest part of the day, and then returning to work later into the evening. It’s a rhythm that made a lot of sense long before air conditioning, supermarkets, and 24-hour convenience became normal in the U.S. and other European countries. But I’m finding it a little depressing. The streets are empty. Stores look like they’ve been closed since the Dark Ages, with metal gates over the doors. The piazzas empty out. It feels like a deserted ghost town.
The riposo and lack of air conditioning go hand in hand. The buildings are made of heavy stone with small windows, so many places are naturally dark. The shutters stay closed to keep the heat out, which means even less natural light. I’m used to bright, open, airy spaces with lots of sunshine, so this doesn’t fit with my natural circadian rhythm, and I find it difficult. I know what I need to do, and I do it. But I haven’t gotten used to it, and I’m struggling a bit.
I’ve been feeling a little off. We were up until 2:00 in the morning Friday night at the opera, and I slept terribly that night. Then I slept poorly again last night because I was overtired. After a mid-afternoon nap, I had a nice break to reflect on how I’d like to say this (which I am doing now).
When I woke up, I just lay there and thought about nothing… in the heat, with the sound of a fan blowing. It reminded me of when I was a kid in Brooklyn and later on Long Island, before we had air conditioning, or when we would only turn it on for a little while during the day. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go. The days felt so long. It felt free. Someone else took care of dinner and the bills. The day would be ahead of me. I’d wake up, lie in bed, and just think about nothing in particular while I listened to the fan blowing.
Today was like that. I need this in my life. Everyone should be fortunate enough to take a (what Daren is calling) sabbatical in their mid-life at some point.
I wanted time to reflect, to think, to decide what to keep and what to let go of—in what I think, what I own, what I do, and what I want to do. While riposo isn’t my cup of tea, it is helping me not “go, go, go” all day and instead take an afternoon break.
Retirement adjustment is a real thing. I knew it wouldn’t be some kind of amazing transition. I wasn’t sure what to expect and this is all part of it.
I’m not sure exactly what I’m trying to say, except that there is much more going on here than what shows up in our Travelogue. While this kind of sounds like a Seinfeld show (in that it’s about nothing), there is so much more than the eye can see in the nothing. There’s been a lot of soul-searching, a lot of downtime, and a lot of adjusting to a different way of life. Some parts of it I think I’ll carry home with me. Other parts I’ll happily leave behind. I don’t think the grass is greener anywhere else, but I do think it’s worth seeing that there are other ways to do things, even in two first world kind of similar countries. I feel blessed to have this experience even though most days do not look like the blogs you read! And I have to say I’m gladder than you would think that the actual experience is not exactly as it may seem in our posts. The nothingness is really where the treasure is for me. And that is something I will always carry with me no matter where I am standing in the world.
The gorgeous sounds of the opera Tosca filled the lakeside amphitheater as we took in the spectacle of an open-air opera in Italy. The leading tenor, Cavaradossi, pours out his love of life and his love for Tosca as he prepares for his imminent execution. No one writes soaring, sumptuous melodies quite like Puccini. And no one writes opera with such passion, tenderness, and heartbreak. The haunting theme of E lucevan le stelle is passed from a clarinet, to violin, before being taken up by the tenor, and finally returning back to the orchestra. These are melodies that stay with you long after the opera has ended.
Puccini wrote some of the world’s most beloved operas. He composed many of them from his home on the lake in Torre del Lago, where we found ourselves on Friday evening watching Tosca in an open-air amphitheater. From our seats we watched a full moon rising over the stage while catching glimpses of the lake beyond. Onstage there was torture, passion, betrayal, stabbings, suicides, and of course magnificent music. It was the full Italian opera experience.
We were lucky enough to have heard about the Puccini festival back in the spring, an annual summer-time event in which his operas are performed at Torre del Lago Puccini, where Puccini did much of his composing. To make a weekend out of it, we booked a hotel in the nearby city of Lucca for two nights. Lucca is one of our favorite cities. We first came to Lucca last December on a very quick trip to make a final decision on our apartment. While the rental near Lucca did not work out, we loved the very brief time we spent in the city and vowed to come back when we had more time to explore.
Lucca, like many Italian cities, is surrounded by thick walls. Unlike other towns, Lucca’s Renaissance walls are still completely intact, having never been breached or destroyed. They are impressive to look upon. It is difficult to imagine how many bricks were made and laid, how many workers labored, and over how many years such a massive structure, stretching nearly three miles around the city, was built. It is equally difficult to imagine living in a world where every city needed walls to protect itself from neighboring powers such as Pisa or Florence. But this was the reality of 15th century Italy which explains the fact that so many cities are walled in and, whenever possible, built on top of hills! Defense was critical in the dangerous world of Medieval and Renaissance Italy.
While the walls were interesting, the best part about them now is that they have been transformed into a kind of outdoor park. The top of the wall is planted with grass and stately trees and there is a paved trail on which one can walk, jog, or cycle completely around the city without interruption. One morning, before the heat settled in, we enjoyed one of our favorite runs since moving to Italy. Koji sniffed a good portion of the walls as well, and even got to spend a bit of time off leash.
Inside the walls, Lucca offers many of the things we have grown accustomed to in Italian cities: ancient churches, lovely piazzas, excellent gelato, Italian restaurants, and centuries of history. Yet the city has an energy all its own. It feels clean, beautifully preserved, and less encumbered by the overwhelming crowds found in nearby Florence.
For me, one of the highlights was a small museum dedicated to Puccini, housed in his ancestral home. The museum had original scores, libretti, some of his clothes and my favorite thing, the Steinway piano on which he composed his works.
Much of our time here felt similar to time in other Italian cities: We had good pizza, good gelato, did some window shopping, and appreciated some historical buildings. And we are starting to feel a bit of “been there, done that” as we continue to explore Italy. But this city still captured me and found a place in my heart.
I am adding it to my list of top places to visit in Italy. I am even thinking about putting together a few sample “itineraries” for those interested in an experience in Italy beyond (or even avoiding) the usual Rome, Venice, Florence circuit. Send me a note if you’d be interested.
We also managed to squeeze in a short trip over to Pisa to see whether the tower still leans. Pisa is only about 30 minutes from Lucca, so after breakfast on our first morning we headed over, hoping to beat both the crowds and the heat. We learned two things. First, the tower does indeed lean—a lot. Second, it is part of an extraordinary complex that includes a magnificent cathedral and baptistry, all set within the Piazza dei Miracoli just inside Pisa’s ancient walls. The cathedral, with its blend of Romanesque, Byzantine, and Islamic influences, is one of the most remarkable I’ve seen in Italy. We also learned that this is one of the most tourist-heavy destinations in the country. By late morning it was packed with tourists, buses, influencers, selfie-snappers, and the heat was becoming intense. We made a quick, surgical strike, admired the tower and cathedral, and retreated before Koji completely melted in the building heat.
Now we are back in Gaville to catch up on projects, get some work done, and implement a new strategy for dealing with the heat. Heat is a new reality that has taken center stage recently. Our apartment has no air conditioning, relying instead on its thick stone walls and high ceilings to stay comfortable. This strategy has worked well for hundreds of years, but this week, with temperatures are hovering daily around 100, it is becoming a bit more of a challenge.
We are learning to adapt. We have standing fans upstairs and downstairs. One blows on us all night. We are also reorganizing our days, taking advantage of the morning hours before the heat sets in. We try to get our exercise and dog walks in early. By 1pm it is simply too hot to run or bike, or even to walk around. During the afternoon we try to move less, drink a lot of fluids, and avoid going out whenever possible.
The extreme heat has added a whole new and unwelcome element to our experience, turning summer, which has always been the best time of year for outdoor activity and travel, into more of a grim slog requiring strategizing and sapping the enjoyment out of many experiences. Fortunately, autumn is not far away.
We continue to find ways to adapt to life in Italy. Learning to live with the heat is simply the latest chapter in a year of discovering new places, embracing unfamiliar routines, and, along the way, learning more about ourselves. That was, after all, the point of this entire adventure. I have no doubt that we will return home with a renewed appreciation for much of what we left behind, but also changed by an experience that was as much about looking inward as looking outward.
It’s been a few weeks since we last blogged. Mostly because we’ve been traveling, but also because it’s been so hot that it’s harder to be motivated to do much more than sit in front of a fan (yes, a fan, because A/C is a lot less common here than in the US)!
Before I write about our recent trip, I want to step back and tell you about the regions of Italy.
Italy is divided into 20 regions which are, in some ways, like our states. Many of these regions you’ve probably heard about, like Tuscany, Campagna, Piedmont, or Sicily. Five of the regions have a sort of special status. They are fully part of the country of Italy, but they are considered “autonomous regions”. Unlike Italy’s other regions, these five have a little more control over their own affairs because of their geography, history, or cultural identity. Some have strong French, German, or Slovene influences. Others are islands with strong local traditions and culture. The reasons for this special status are historical and cultural.
I was excited to learn about these regions. I am not technically able to travel outside of Italy without risking my residency in Italy. I’ve been here more than the 90 days that are allowed in the Schengen countries of Europe. Because I have a pending citizenship application, I am allowed to stay in Italy past the 90 days. But other countries like France or Germany might not see it that way. So we’ve essentially made peace with the idea of staying put in Italy until things are “official”. Poor us. But in truth, I have been getting a bit tired of Italian food. Hard to believe. And much of what we’ve seen is starting to look a bit familiar; piazza, Roman ruins, hilltop castle. It’s all incredibly beautiful, but I was starting to crave something just a little different. Perhaps these autonomous regions would do the trick. Maybe a visit to one of them would be like leaving the country without actually leaving the country.
Two of the five are a little harder for us to get to—Sicily and Sardinia. We may make it to Sicily this winter when it’s cooler, but Sardinia, while I’d love to go, just might not be in the cards. The other three are close enough to make easy road trips.
So we started out with a trip to Valle d’Aosta a few weeks ago. We wrote about the trip itself, but we not much about the culture. I was genuinely excited as we crossed into this special region. I was hoping to see something a little different and, even more importantly, eat something a little different. The architecture changed almost immediately. The towns we visited looked more like Swiss Alpine villages—which makes perfect sense since it borders Switzerland.
I couldn’t wait for dinner.
Unfortunately, we arrived at our hotel in Courmayeur a little late and many places were already closed. We ended up at a small restaurant that mostly served pizza and the usual Italian staples. It did have fondue on the menu. Fondue and polenta were about the only things that felt new (and honestly, polenta isn’t exactly that “new”). And the fondue came with the standard cured meats for dipping, and the rest of the menu followed the familiar antipasti, primi, secondi, and contorni format. The other restaurants we looked at were much the same—maybe one or two dishes that weren’t on menus elsewhere in Italy, but not much beyond that. The homes and building definitely looked different, and the mountain scenery was a major change, but the food was solidly “Italian”.
So last week we set out for the regions of Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia. The latter is one is another of Italy’s five special autonomous regions.
Below is a photo of the Italian regions. The pins are where we have pin and the blue circles highlight the 5 special regions.
VERONA
When we got to Verona, I was seriously surprised at how much international stuff there was. There was an international pharmacy that specializes in helping foreigners. There was food other than Italian! Of course Italian food still dominated the scene, but there were more options than we’d found in Florence. It wasn’t always obvious, either. What looked like a typical Italian restaurant often had burgers, wings, salmon, potatoes… no Thai or deli sandwiches, but things… options. Exciting! You can tell from my writing that I really am craving some non-Italian food!
Verona itself was just… pretty. I get why Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet there. We used an app for a self-guided walking tour and were quite impressed with the history that was visible and beautifully preserved. When strolling through Verona you move seamlessly amongst well preserved Roman ruins, including a large coliseum, Medieval buildings, elegant palazzos, and lots of lovely piazzas. The town felt vibrant and well preserved without feeling run down.The squares were probably the coziest and most inviting we’ve seen yet. Other cities have squares that are more architecturally impressive, but Verona had a warmth to it that we just loved!
One medieval square had an ancient fountain from which Koji was delighted to take a drink, and a host of buildings colorfully decorated wiht frescos from the 1400’s. It contained a market, just as it had 600 years ago, although todays “market” featured refrigerator magnets, hand held fans, and granitas, rather than mutton or grain.
My favorite evening was one when we left Koji behind in the hotel to recover from the heat, and just wander the city as dusk fell. We stumbled onto Castelvecchio just as the sun was setting and slowly walked across an ancient medieval bridge that connected the castle to the other side of the river. It was truly magical. Unlike some of the other castles we’ve visited, this one felt like a place people had actually lived in—the kind of castle you imagine in fairy tales. It even had a moat and a drawbridge. We didn’t rush back. Instead, we meandered along the river, enjoying in the fading light and watching people enjoy the cooler evening air. Magical!
We thought two nights might be too much for Verona. Instead, we left wishing we’d stayed longer and are already hoping to come back.
TREVISO
Next we went on to try out our first stay at an agriturismo. Think of it as somewhere between a bed & breakfast, an AirBnB, and a farm stay. There are agriturismos all over Italy. Many are working farms that have converted part of their property into guest accommodations, often serving food made from ingredients they grow or produce themselves. They’re scattered throughout the Italian countryside and are a great way to experience a quieter side of Italy.
I was not expecting air conditioning, a large space, or almost anything really—and whoa what a surprise! It was hands down one of the nicest places we’ve stayed. This agriturismo was part of a working family winery making Proseco, along with a few red and white wine varietals. We literally walked out of our room and into a vineyard. And it was inexpensive as heck! It wasn’t close to much, so driving was a must, but it was absolutely perfect as a stop between cities.
Our main objective in coming to this part of Veneto was to check out Treviso and, of course, to try tiramisu. What we didn’t realize is that we would discover unexpectedly, one of the most beautiful regions we’ve seen in Italy. But first, Treviso.
Treviso is sometimes called “Little Venice” because it has canals that wind through parts of the historic center, although on a much smaller scale than its famous neighbor. More importantly, from our perspective was that it is widely credited as the birthplace of tiramisu, with several cafés claiming to have created the dessert in the 1970s. Whether that’s completely true or not, it was reason enough to visit.
Well, a mini Venice is a S-T-R-E-T-C-H, but I can see how one might say that. The canals were scenic and beautiful in their own right, but had little in common with those in Venice. I actually think Treviso would be wise to drop the comparison to Venice and instead just promote itself as a beautiful town on a river with many lovely little canals running through the historic town center. Think swans and weeping willows rather than gondolas and serenades.
We did our research ahead of time on the place where tiramisu was supposedly “invented”: Le Becchieria, an old and respected restaurant that now, with its tiramisu fame, has added a bakery café for those seeking this famed dessert.
I had a twinge of missing my dad here. For some unknown reason, when he met Daren back in 2010 over breakfast one morning at my brother’s house, he was already talking about what we’d have for dinner. Like many Italians, food was never very far from his mind. He didn’t know Daren from Adam, but somehow decided Daren liked Fra Diavolo. Later that evening, when we picked up Italian takeout, there was the Fra Diavolo for Daren and tiramisu because, apparently, “Daren & Gabby like it.”
This was quite funny to all of us at the time—my dad deciding who liked what. The funny part was that Daren had never even had Fra Diavolo before that night, although he did end up really liking it. Gabby, on the other hand, never liked tiramisu, and while Daren certainly wouldn’t turn up his nose at it, he’d never have called it a favorite. Well now, after nearly five months in Italy, Daren claims that tiramisu is in fact one of his favorite deserts, and the one at this little restaurant in the small town of Treviso, is the best!
So here we were in the birthplace of tiramisu… and I thought of Pops. As I said, I’m not a fan, but this was truly the best tiramisu I’d ever had. We usually share desserts, but we each got our own piece, and it was 100% worth the calories—and getting completely full.
Later that day we took a drive and discovered the unexpected highlight of the trip: The Proseco Hills, the place where the famous Italian bubbly is made.
The hills between Asolo and Valdobbiadene are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognized for their centuries-old vineyards and the unique landscape shaped by generations of winemakers. This is the heart of Prosecco country. While wines labeled “Prosecco” can be grown and produced from a wide range of places across north-eastern Italy, only Prosecco from two small regions, Valdobbiadene and Asolo, can be designated “DOCG”, indicating the highest quality and strict adherence to the ancient methods of growth and production.
We drove through several of the towns. Each one we came to was more beautiful than the last. The views were drop-dead amazing. Rolling hills covered with vines. Proseco grape clusters hanging down from the vines. The Alps themselves looming in the north. Farms, churches, and houses dotting the hilly landscape. We had the windows down, Koji had his head out the window, it was the golden hour, and it will forever be one of the more memorable drives I’ve taken in my life. Daren mapped out the entire route, and I’m so thankful he did.
TRIESTE
Our last stop was the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia where we hopefully would find some hearty Eastern European food. On the way, we stopped in Aquileia, another UNESCO World Heritage Site. Once one of the biggest and wealthiest cities of the Roman Empire, Aquileia is home to remarkably preserved Roman ruins, one of the world’s first Christian churches, and among the largest and best-preserved mosaic floors in the world. It’s considered one of Italy’s most important archaeological sites.
And yet… it was here, walking down the street in the burning sun on our way to another church, and I thought, I don’t think I can walk into one more dimly lit church, crane my neck to look at another fresco, and pretend to care why or how it got there. I had officially hit historical site overload.
So I sat outside with Koji in the shade and urged Daren to go geek out on this stuff. According to Daren, the mosaic floor was truly spectacular. The basilica was first built in 313 AD, but the current structure dates from the 11th century. However, the floor is the thing that visitors come to see. You enter the church on a raised plexiglass floor and look down on an enormous expanse of mosaic floor perfectly preserved from the 300’s, showing scenes from the bible as well as animals and fish and complex Roman designs. It’s amazing to learn that some of the original structure was destroyed by the Huns, yes the Huns, but the floor remained intact.
After Daren finished viewing the church, we were getting hot, hungry and cranky, so after an unremarkable (truly terrible) lunch, we hopped back in the car and headed for Trieste.
Trieste has an interesting historical and cultural background. It only became part of Italy after WWI. Prior to that, it was a major port city in the Austro-Hungarian empire where goulash, schnitzel, and beer were more likely to be found than pasta, pizza, and red wine. It’s history, culture, buildings, and traditions share more in common with Vienna and the Balkans than with Italy.
We arrived smack in the middle of a Sunday afternoon in July, not far from the famous Miramare Castle. Right on the water at a cute(ish) hotel on the Adriatic where it looked like Spring Break: Trieste Edition.
There was no beach to speak of—just a few miles of stone and concrete waterfront where hundreds of people were stretched out in the sun or under the trees. There were stairways leading down to the water and the whole city was swimming, or so it seemed. It was a scene! I wasn’t sure I was going to like this place. Too crazy? Too busy?
So we headed into the city and left Koji back at the hotel enjoying what turned out to be the best thing about it—the air conditioning. Naturally, we started with gelato and coffee. We went straight to the recommended gelato shop, but the line was so long you had to take a number, so we skipped it and found another place in the main square where we could sit in the shade.
The gelato was more like ice cream, and my Americano (I think) tasted like classic drip coffee. I don’t know for sure, but it smelled and tasted unlike any coffee I’ve had so far in Italy. I loved every drop of it. Maybe things were different in Trieste. Afterward we wandered through the canal area and walked up to Castello di San Giusto for views over the city.
When we got back, the crowds had thinned enough to allow us to walk along the waterfront with a dog, so we took Koji for a walk. For dinner we stopped at one of the permanent food kiosks along the way. I wasn’t expecting much, but my sandwich was one of the best sandwiches I’ve had in a long time. Daren got a burger that he said was great, and we finished with Nutella crêpes.
By evening the crowds had thinned further, the air had cooled, and suddenly Trieste felt completely different. The place started to grow on me.
The next morning I went for one of the most pleasant runs. Monday morning was a completely different world; sun, cooler temperatures, and no crowds. Later we grabbed Koji and walked down to Miramare Castle. That ended up being my favorite place in all of Trieste. With my historical site overload still in full force, I insisted Daren tour the castle while Koji and I enjoyed the shade and people-watching. I went back by myself the next day and wandered the grounds for a long time.
We went back into the city one more time before heading home, but I think we’re officially “citied” out for a while. Instead, we spent most of the afternoon reading and talking along the waterfront before ending the day at an American restaurant that looked like something straight out of the Old West.
You’ll likely sense a bit of travel exhaustion if you read between the lines above. We are incredibly lucky to be able to have these experiences, and we have seen and done so much. But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and I think we may have hit that point during this trip. It’s not black and white. We loved so many of the things we saw and did, but some of the little annoyances that you either don’t perceive, or don’t assign much weight to on a brief vacation, can start to grate a bit more after many months. It’s also very apparent that the heat is has a major negative impact on our enjoyment. It’s just very hard to escape the hot sun and the air conditioning that we are so accustomed to in the U.S is not as ubiquitous over here. That is where we are. We are taking a bit of time off back “home” in Gaville to rest up. But we’ll be back on the road next month with a trip down south to see the family and spend some time on the beach.
This week Daren and I are both contributing a little something to the Travelouge.
Pinch Me
by Esterina
Yesterday morning was Saturday. Even though we’re no longer working a traditional schedule, we’re still living by—and honoring (and honestly loving)—the rhythm of weekdays and weekends. Daren was making breakfast while I was cutting up fruit when I noticed we had quite a few oranges. On a whim, I squeezed a few and made fresh orange juice. Back home, we’d occasionally have extra oranges, and I’d always think about doing something like that, but it somehow felt like there was never enough time.
It took all of a few minutes. Standing there, I found myself wondering why we hadn’t lived like this before. And then I had one of those “pinch me” moments—realizing once again that I’m living a life I always wanted to live.
This week was full of those moments! We took a short midweek trip to see the lentil flower fields in bloom. Daren will share more about that below, but I want to say how deeply lucky and grateful I felt.
First, because there are so many fewer crowds during the week, and our schedules now allow us to take advantage of that. Second, because we live close enough to experience places like this without needing a major trip. But most importantly, because our lives are so much less hectic now, I am far more present and aware while we’re actually living these moments.
The places we saw this week were breathtaking—fields of flowers stretching beneath mountains that made me feel small and humble in the most beautiful way. Simple lunches. Healthy breakfasts. Enough sleep every night. I’ve never felt healthier or more blessed.
As we navigate this year, we’ve been doing a lot of spiritual reading and having long conversations about how we want to spend the next phase of our lives. I think we both sensed that we needed to step away from our old lives for a while in order to better understand how to become the best versions of ourselves—and how to leave the world a little better than we found it.
Our conversations can range from grand ideas—like giving up every worldly possession and embracing a Francis of Assisi path—to quieter ones, like the life of Dorothea in Middlemarch, where unsung goodness, ordinary kindness, and simple acts of love become their own meaningful legacy.
What I know for certain is this: I want to hold onto beauty, presence, and these little “pinch me” moments. They remind me that I’m living a purposeful life—one where even something as simple as an extra orange doesn’t go to waste, but instead becomes part of the beauty of an ordinary morning.
Take my breath away:
by Daren
I think we both needed to be pinched as we beheld for the first time the Piana di Castelluccio (Plain of Castelluccio). We stood in silence for a moment, staring out over stunning landscape unlike anything we had seen before in Italy. This Italian adventure has been filled with so many stunning and memorable sights, but our trip to the Piana was something different. Much of the grandeur of Italy comes from a blending of natural and human achievement: a walled city perched high above a green valley dotted with cypress trees, or a small town clinging to a ledge overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The Altopiano was all about nature—a place high above the tree line in the central mountains of the Apennines, where rugged rocky outcroppings and miles of flat green plains meet an endless blue sky.
Yet even here, people have left their mark on the landscape. As we descended from the mountain pass onto the plain, we first noticed a distant sheen of yellow, followed by patches of blue and red. As we got closer, we could see clearly demarcated fields forming a patchwork of colors, almost like a quilt. These were the famed lentil fields of the high plain, and we had arrived just as the flowers were beginning to bloom.
Before this trip, I knew very little about where lentils come from and had no idea the plants produced such delicate flowers. These tiny blooms, spread across thousands of acres of the Piana, create a natural spectacle that relatively few people outside Italy know about. I learned of them through my Coffee Break Italian podcast. One of the early lessons featured an Italian teacher describing the lentil blooms of this little-known region, and I added it to my mental list of places to visit. Since the blooms are at their peak in June and early July, we decided this was the perfect time to see them for ourselves.
We learned that the nearby town of Norcia would make a good base and set out for a two-day visit. Norcia is only about three and a half hours from our home in Gaville, and we stopped in Spoleto along the way after hearing it was worth a visit. We had a sandwich in the piazza overlooking the cathedral and wandered the old streets for a while, but the town felt dreary and dead. Perhaps we caught it on an off day, but it felt tired. The truly terrible sandwiches didn’t help. We moved on.
Norcia, where we stayed for two nights, was a different story entirely. It sits near the geographic center of Italy, where Umbria, Abruzzo, and Le Marche come together. Many Italian towns are famous for a particular product: Modena for balsamic vinegar, Genoa for pesto, Parma for Parmesan cheese, and Norcia, as we soon learned, for norcineria—the art of producing cured meats. Prosciutto di Norcia and a host of other types of cured meat, are considered among the finest in Italy.
We also learned that Norcia was devastated by a major earthquake in 2016, and nearly ten years later the city remains an enormous construction site. Much of it has been lovingly restored, including the cathedral, city walls, gates, and main street. Yet many buildings remain wrapped in scaffolding, and piles of rubble and vacant lots still mark places where structures once stood, a reminder of the destruction that transformed this beautiful town.
Despite the construction, Norcia felt vibrant and welcoming. Perhaps it was the reconstruction effort itself, but the town seemed full of energy and optimism. The main piazza shone brightly with white stone buildings, and there were very few tourists. Every other storefront seemed to be a norcineria, selling cured meats, truffle products, and local pecorino cheese. Beyond a handful of restaurants and cafés there wasn’t much else, but it proved to be the perfect base for exploring the region.
We stayed in a lovely hotel right in the center of town, home to the Michelin-starred restaurant Vespasia, where we enjoyed—one of us more than the other—a multi-course tasting menu. These dinners are designed to unfold slowly, with each course presenting a creative combination of flavors, textures, and colors. Since dinner starts late in Italy, we ate well into the evening and bumped against our usual bedtime, leaving us tired and stuffed—a poor combination for a good night’s sleep. The bill took our breath away, and by the end of the evening I think we both concluded that Michelin-starred dining is not for us, especially if dinner begins at eight o’clock at night.
The next morning we packed a picnic of fruit, cheese, bread, olives, yogurt, and local cured meats and headed for the Piana di Castelluccio. The road wound back and forth into the mountains outside Norcia. It felt as though we were ascending into the sky. Then, as the road bent sharply north, the entire Piana suddenly unfolded before us. The landscape seemed impossibly vast: green plains stretching to the horizon, framed by steep mountain walls and an endless blue sky. We were above the tree line, and all we could see were green fields extending for miles in every direction.
As we descended onto the plain, we began noticing well-marked walking trails inviting visitors out into the fields. Koji was extremely enthusiastic about this idea, so we parked the car and started walking. Over the course of the morning, we stopped in several locations to explore the fields and admire the wildflowers in full bloom. At one point, I experienced a moment of genuine, spiritual awe. Standing alone in a field of blue, red, purple, and yellow flowers, I suddenly found myself surrounded by pale blue moths with spotted wings fluttering around me. Several landed gently on my shoes and pant legs. The soft colors of the flowers and the moths added flashes of color to the green canvas of the plain, creating an impression I will not soon forget.
Far in the distance we could see a town perched on a hill overlooking the plain. This was Castelluccio, the center of lentil farming in the area. As we approached, it became apparent that much of the town remained in ruins. Castelluccio had been devastated by the same earthquake that struck Norcia, and reconstruction here appears to be progressing much more slowly. The residents have created a temporary village just outside the historic town consisting of cafés, norcineria, and small farm stands selling lentils and other local products, including one of the best pecorino cheeses I have tasted in Italy. We stopped for coffee and a snack before taking one final walk onto the plain.
From a distance, the landscape around the town appears as a patchwork of colored fields. Some are pale yellow, while others appear purple, white, blue, or red. As we got closer, we could see the flowers responsible for these different palettes. Some fields were planted with lentils, while others were filled with wildflowers in bloom. The lentil flowers created subtle washes of yellow when viewed across great distances. Other fields were dominated by brilliant blue cornflowers mixed with red poppies. Some parcels were left fallow. Viewed from afar, the entire plain resembled a giant quilt stitched together from green, yellow, blue, and red fabric.
We enjoyed our picnic just off the road overlooking the fields before continuing to Forca di Presta, a high mountain pass just across the border in the region of Le Marche. Beyond the pass, the landscape changed again. High craggy peaks gave way to steep valleys, and the region of Le Marche stretched before us toward the Adriatic Sea in the east.
There was also a street food vendor selling stuffed olives, a specialty of Le Marche that we had first learned about from Stanley Tucci’s television series on Italian food and regional culture—a show I highly recommend. Naturally, we had to try them. They did not disappoint.
As we were enjoying the olives, a large flock of sheep passed by under the supervision of a shepherd and three sheepdogs, their bells clanging softly in the mountain air. Koji got to discuss work with one of the dogs and learn about life as an Italian working dog. Actually, they mostly sniffed each other for a few seconds and then moved on.
We spent nearly the entire day walking through fields, with Koji running happily ahead and the two of us simply enjoying the colors, the vistas, and the pure mountain air. Our eyes constantly shifted between distant beauty and close-up beauty: towering mountains, blue skies, and endless plains on one hand; delicate wildflowers and colorful moths on the other.
Back in Norcia, we enjoyed a light dinner and a good night’s sleep before heading home the next morning. This journey felt different from many of our previous Italian adventures. There were no great museums, famous churches, or remarkable works of architecture. Instead, the memories we carried home were of open space, wildflowers, mountain air, and a landscape that seemed almost impossibly vast. As we plan our upcoming trip to the Italian Alps, we are hoping for more moments like this—places that remind us how much beauty exists beyond Italy’s celebrated cities and towns.
Spoleto & Town of Norcia
Castelluccio di Norcia and Surrounding Area
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There is a place in Italy where mountains plunge straight into the sea and colorful villages cling to cliffs and tiny coves along the shoreline. Houses painted in shades of yellow, orange, and ochre cling to cliffs over the water. Above them, terraced vineyards and olive groves produce crisp local white wines and flavorful olive oil. There are five towns in all—Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso al Mare. Together they comprise Cinque Terre (Five Lands), one of the most stunning and scenic places in Italy. If you’ve ever seen a screensaver or postcard featuring a picturesque Italian seaside village, chances are it was depicting one of these five special towns.
Hoping to see Cinque Terre before summer tourist season was in full swing, we headed to Liguria, the coastal region we have come to love. Here you’ll find the fabled Italian Riviera, the great port city of Genoa (the birthplace of Christopher Columbus) and, of course, Cinque Terre.
The towns of Cinque Terre were, in days past, reachable only by water, leaving them isolated and heavily dependent on the sea for food and transportation. Today, a train line runs straight through the mountains and emerges at a station in each of the five towns, making a visit remarkably convenient. Travelers can easily move from town to town by train or arrive from one of the many nearby cities and villages outside the region.
In addition, a well-maintained network of hiking trails connects the towns and provides an opportunity to walk along the cliffs, through terraced vineyards and olive groves, and enjoy spectacular views of the Mediterranean. These trails are not for the faint of heart or the out of shape. The climbs can be strenuous, although the paths are in excellent condition and exceptionally well-marked.
While we failed spectacularly in our effort to avoid tourists, we were nonetheless completely enchanted by the beauty of the towns and the magic of this special part of Italy. In a year filled with superlatives, Cinque Terre stands out as one of the very best places we have visited, and perhaps our favorite so far.
To experience Cinque Terre, we chose to stay a few miles north of the region in the seaside town of Chiavari. The five towns themselves offer limited and often expensive hotel options. In retrospect, I think we would enjoy staying in one of the villages for a few nights, allowing us to experience the early mornings and evenings before and after the day-tripper crowds descend.
On our first day, we took the train from Chiavari to the southernmost town, Riomaggiore. Koji joined us, and we planned to walk from there to Manarola, having learned that this route was the shortest and easiest. Koji is feeling his years and is probably no longer up for a difficult hike involving steep climbs in the hot sun.
Fortunately for all of us, the path connecting these two towns, known as the Via dell’Amore (Way of Love), was not really a hike at all but rather a beautifully paved walkway high above the sea, offering incredible views without any significant climbing. The sea was rough, and waves exploded against the rocks below us, sending plumes of spray into the air. The constant roar of the surf added to the unforgettable vista and provided some of the best photographs of the trip.
We enjoyed a light lunch in Manarola and spent some time wandering through the town. These villages are difficult to describe. You have to see them. Even photographs struggle to capture their charm and scale. After some gelato and a bit more exploring, we returned to Chiavari to enjoy the hotel pool and a great dinner at the hotel restaurant.
We had planned this trip around the travel schedule of our good friends Cheryl and Mike, who were spending a week exploring Provence. We arranged to meet them, along with their traveling companions Greg and Suzanne, in Ventimiglia, a Riviera town located right on the French border.
We drove north that morning, passing through Genoa before arriving in Ventimiglia for a leisurely seaside lunch and an enjoyable afternoon with friends from home. The road along the Ligurian coast is a remarkable feat of engineering. At times it felt as though we spent more time in tunnels than out of them. Italy has built an extraordinary network of highways through some very challenging terrain. The drive provided a good demonstrated how dramatically geography has shaped Italy’s history. Mountains separated regions for centuries, helping create the strong regional identities, dialects, and traditions that still define the country today. The vast network of tunnels, highways, and rail lines have been revolutionary in connecting, for the first time in history, these disparate regions and fostering a deeper unity that existed before.
Back in Chiavari, we decided to return to Cinque Terre to see a few more of the towns and tackle a more ambitious hike. This time Koji remained at the hotel, and he did not seem particularly disappointed when he learned how strenuous the route would be. He held down the fort and guarded the room from his travel bed while we headed out to the train station.
We began in Monterosso al Mare, the northernmost of the five towns and the only one with a true beach. Our first glimpse featured the classic Italian seaside scene: perfectly arranged rows of colorful umbrellas and hundreds of people enjoying the warm weather from lounge chairs or the water itself.
While it is technically not yet summer, Italy is already warm. Days have been sunny, with temperatures in the 70s and 80s—perfect beach weather.
Monterosso quickly became our favorite of the towns we visited. It featured a beautiful church, narrow winding streets, colorful flowers, and a relaxed atmosphere that encouraged lingering. We spent quite a while exploring before beginning our hike.
The trail out of Monterosso wastes no and immediately starts climbing straight into the hills above town. We ascended for at least an hour, passing through terraced vineyards while taking in views of the Mediterranean far below. There were plenty of fellow hikers on the trail, ample shady spots for rest breaks, and clear signs directing us toward Vernazza, the next town along the coast.
The highlight of the hike comes when Vernazza suddenly appears below you. Hundreds of feet beneath the trail, the village is tucked into a narrow opening between the mountains and the sea, its colorful buildings clustered around a small harbor. A medieval tower overlooks the town, and later in the day we climbed it to enjoy yet another remarkable perspective on the coastline.
We had a mediocre pizza for lunch—proof that there is bad food everywhere, even in Italy. Food was not the highlight of our visit. In heavily touristed destinations like these, finding an exceptional meal can sometimes be difficult. Restaurants catering primarily to tourists do not always meet our increasingly finicky standards.
Even so, despite the crowds and the dozens of languages we heard around us, including plenty of American English, we thoroughly enjoyed both the towns and the region. We will undoubtedly return, perhaps a little farther outside the high season next time.
I cannot end this blog without talking about Chiavari, which somewhat unexpectedly has earned a place on our short list of favorite towns in Italy.
We selected Chiavari simply because of its proximity to Cinque Terre and because we found an attractive hotel at a reasonable price. What we discovered was a gorgeous and authentic town featuring a seaside promenade, fountains, parks, a beautiful piazza, rocky beaches, a marina, and miles of elegant porticos.
We knew almost nothing about the town before arriving and spent many hours wandering its streets and stumbling upon beautiful surprises. The town was clean, well maintained, and refreshingly authentic. There were relatively few foreign tourists. Instead, the streets and promenades were filled with Italian families, babies, teenagers, parents, grandparents, and people with disabilities, all sharing public spaces together. We saw circles of teenagers chatting on the beach. Groups of elderly gathered on park benches together, families with strollers, and dogs everywhere. There were small dogs, large dogs, elderly dogs, puppies, all walking, running, sniffing, tugging, and occasionally barking. Hands down this was the most dog-friendly town we’ve seen in a country that is renowned for its dog-friendliness.
The combination of such a rich mix of people, a lovely and well-kept city, and a relaxed seaside atmosphere created a great sense of energy and vibrancy. Chiavari felt alive in the best possible way.
As always seems to happen with places we love, our days in Liguria passed far too quickly. We returned home with sore feet, hundreds of photographs, and a growing conviction that Liguria may be our favorite region of Italy. We came for Cinque Terre, but in some ways it was Chiavari, the unexpected discovery, that lingered most in our minds.
Either way, we’ll be back!
Talk to us – add a comment, email/text… we’d love to hear from you too!
Feel free to check out the Instagram posts from this trip:
Standing at a hospital checkout desk, credit card in hand, can be nerve-wracking. How much will it cost? Is my credit limit sufficient? Will there be more bills later when they calculate the radiologist’s fees or blood tests? Will I need to dip into a home equity line of credit to cover the costs?
But wait — we are in Italy. Maybe healthcare is different here.
We waited in line at the cashier’s desk for about 10 seconds before being called up. A few keystrokes later, we had a bill for $177, paid for with our Visa, and we were on our way.
What, do you suppose, do you get for $177 in an Italian hospital? A glass of orange juice? A CBC?
In Italy, $177 was the total charge for an ambulance ride on a backboard, an emergency room assessment, an X-ray of the lumbar spine, a head CT, an electrocardiogram, and an orthopedic telehealth consultation from the University Hospital in the nearby city of Perugia.
All of these services were provided for Esterina after she slipped on wet pavement in Assisi and fell hard on her sacrum. The fall itself was painful, but the shock, pain, and stress of the event caused her to faint, prompting an ambulance trip to the ER.
You might wonder whether you get what you pay for. Joking aside, in the US this entire event would likely have cost thousands of dollars, some covered by insurance and some not. Would the care have been thousands of dollars better?
The entire experience lasted about four hours. The ambulance took roughly 20 minutes to reach us on streets designed for mules, not advanced life support vehicles. Upon arrival in the ER, Esterina spent about 15 minutes on a stretcher in a hallway before being wheeled into an assessment room where an ER physician sat at a desk asking questions while a nurse relayed them and performed a cursory exam. An ECG was quickly performed and found to be normal. An X-ray of the lumbar spine was ordered. Although we were all certain she had not hit her head, a CT scan was ordered nonetheless for a fall associated with loss of consciousness.
After the consultation, we were back out in the hallway. We waited about 30 minutes for the radiology room to free up, watching several more seriously injured patients appropriately move ahead of us for imaging. Finally, lumbar films were taken, followed shortly afterward by the CT, and once again we returned to the hallway.
We spent much of the next two hours there, staring at a few bad pieces of art on the walls and watching patients, some bleeding, some moaning, some stoic, come and go. Eventually we learned that the CT was normal, but the spine film showed a “cortical irregularity” in the S3-S4 region. In other words, there may have been a small sacral fracture, though the findings were equivocal.
The ER physician was not comfortable discharging her without an orthopedic consultation. The orthopedist was in the operating room, and no one knew when he or she would be available. There was even discussion of transferring her to a larger hospital.
This was a dark moment for both of us.
I try very hard not to “play doctor” when family members are involved. Judgment can be clouded by emotion, and I have not actively practiced clinical medicine in over 10 years. Still, the concern about transfer felt disproportionate to her clinical condition. She had no neurologic findings, minimal pain, and no clear fracture. Rest, movement as tolerated, and some ibuprofen seemed the likely outcome.
Fortunately, soon afterward an orderly came out and explained that the orthopedist had reviewed the films remotely, spoken with the ER physician, and cleared her for discharge. Ibuprofen as needed. Nothing further.
Ten minutes later we were at the cashier, Visa in hand, and a few minutes after that we were on our way back to our hotel.
Once the trauma, fear, and emotion of the event settled, we had ample time to reflect on our healthcare experience in Italy and to compare it with our own system back home. All in all, the right things were done. The ECG and CT scan made sense. The diagnosis was appropriate, and she was triaged correctly from the start. Getting an orthopedic consultation for a marginal finding may have been somewhat excessive, but it happened quickly enough that the reassurance was probably worthwhile.
In Italy, we got the basics, without the frills. The hospital has no shareholders and earns no profit from our visit or anyone else’s. There was no prior authorization process and no insurance intermediary standing between patient and physician. The radiologist, ER doctor, and orthopedist earn far less than their American counterparts. Yet we still received the essential components of appropriate emergency care, and the outcome was entirely appropriate.
So what might more money have bought?
Better artwork on the walls, certainly. Better bedside manner as well. The physician never actually spoke directly with us, and the nurses and orderlies, while professional, were fairly scarce and often brusque when relaying information. More money might have purchased a more thorough exam. I was somewhat surprised that Esterina was never placed in a hospital gown or given a complete physical examination. She remained in her street clothes and sneakers the entire time — admittedly making it easier to get up and leave.
More money also might have bought a blanket. Throughout the experience Esterina was cold. I covered her with both of our coats along with a thin hospital sheet that I had to request. Perhaps more money would have bought us a curtained exam room like those seen on The Pitt instead of a dingy hallway.
It also could have purchased better facilities and groundskeeping. Many of the hospitals we have seen in Italy, including this one, feel austere and physically underinvested, more functional than welcoming. Tall grass and weeds surround institutional-looking concrete buildings that appear to receive little attention beyond what is necessary to keep them operational.
The biggest thing we did not receive, however, was kindness or reassurance. Everyone was professional, but there was very little warmth. No smiles. No expressions of concern. No one paid much attention to Esterina’s non-life-threatening symptoms or comfort. She was nauseated, dizzy, cold and scared. No one asked. No one checked.
Still, it is important to remember that we were technically uninsured in Italy, even though we carry international coverage that will reimburse us for the charges. An Italian citizen likely would not have paid anything at all for the same care. In the United States, an uninsured person experiencing a similar event could easily face thousands of dollars in bills unless they were fortunate enough to qualify for charity care, Medicaid, or other assistance programs.
How much are all these “extras” worth? Are they worth having 5–20% of the population uninsured? Are they worth a system that can leave people financially devastated by illness or accident? Are they worth the inequities that still define so much of American healthcare?
Personally, I do not believe we should have to choose between humane affordability and humane care. Italian healthcare could use more warmth, comfort, and investment. American healthcare could use far less profiteering and inequity.
Most surprising of all, however, we have not received a single call or card from an injury attorney. And I have not seen a single billboard advertising one anywhere in Umbria.
Back to travel, back to Italian food, and back to health!
A dingy hospital in South Italy (not the one we were in in Assisi)
Yesterday morning I woke up and decided to make lemon ricotta pancakes using the second-to-last lemon my family from Calabria had sent home with us. Saturday or Sunday morning pancakes have become a nice little ritual for us. There was still a thick fog hanging over the hills outside our patio doors, that was just beginning to burn off under a warm, bright Tuscan sun.
As I was fiddling around in the kitchen, Daren was on his phone telling me about an art festival that had just started in Venice. I asked him to put Venice into the map to see how far from us it was.
“Two hours and fifty minutes,” he replied.
Two hours and fifty minutes?
We both just kind of looked at each other — a little awed, a little excited. We knew we lived close to a lot of great places, and of course we’d looked at the map before, but I don’t think we’d really internalized how close and accessible to us these places were. Venice, one of the most iconic travel destinations in the world was less than a 3 hour drive! Rome is just 2 and a half hours away, and Florence just a half hour. In fact, we realized that nearly all the major destinations in Italy, places that people come from all over the world to see, were a day trip away. Suddenly it felt like we should get out there and see some new things.
So after sitting down to eat these delicious pancakes (a new favorite) we decided to take an impromptu trip toward the Bologna area, only about an hour and a half away by car.
We finished breakfast and hopped in the car: windows down, music up, dog nose out the window. We both felt exhilarated, like we were breaking free of self-imposed constraints. As we were driving down the hill out of our neighborhood we stopped and Daren took this photo. Even as he was taking it he said “the camera doesn’t do it justice”
One of us said something to the effect of, “We really didn’t do much this week,” and then we mentally walked back through the week. What had we done? Do we still need to “do things” in order to feel satisfied? What’s wrong with a slow week focused on more mundane things? Well, here is what a “mundane” week in Italy looked like for us:
Sunday we spent HOURS by the pool talking about how we want to spend the rest of our lives. We don’t have an exact plan yet, and this consulting business feels like a small stepping stone toward something, though we aren’t fully sure what yet.
Monday I went grocery shopping. Before leaving, I typed “art supplies Figline Italy” into Google to see where I might buy a canvas or two. That turned into a much longer outing and a lot more than just a canvas.
The rest of the week disappeared into work, dog walks, a lot of art starts and art projects, and me finally finishing the WordPress site that has basically been an online messy closet since its inception in 2015. I’ll paste the link below. While I did this Daren put in some serious hours on the consultancy work.
We also ordered and received a new coffee foamer this week, along with a Bialetti espresso maker I’ve been thinking about for the past seven months. It was more expensive than I normally like to spend, but its beauty kept calling to me. Doppio macchiatos as a midday break are now a new ritual.
We planned a trip to Umbria to visit friends from our neighborhood. We found a new pizzeria to order from for our Friday night pizza ritural that was ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY the yummiest pizza we’ve had here for our tastes so far.
But somehow, despite all of that, it still felt like we hadn’t really “done” anything this week.
So we were both got excited and decided to do something spontaneous. Armed with our new realization that all of Italy was laid out before us and not far away, we were on our way out on the road towards Bologna without a clear plan. Not our usual way of doing things, but it felt new, fun, and a bit daring. We had a good laugh as Daren, much more of a structured planner when it comes to travel, struggled to wrap his mind around being spontaneous. Where will we park? What will we see? Do we need reservations for dinner? This time, let’s just see where we end up and figure it out along the way.
We initially started driving toward Parma, but somewhere around the city of Modena I was really thirsty and wanted to stop, so we shifted plans a bit and ended up there instead.
And we proceeded to have the best day!
Only in Italy – a vending machine for cafeOur first glance (and sniff) of Modena Just arriving
First Glances at Modena
We stopped for a little bite. We were going to look up “things to do” but it was so pretty and such a lovely day, having a destination seemed crazy. We decided to wander. No Trip Advisor, no Michelin Guide, no ChatGPT travel recommendations. Just a new, unknown city where, it turns out, balsamic vinegar comes from.
We stopped in this gorgeous church. We had to go in one at a time because we had Koji with us. Italy is SOOOO dog friendly, but I think they’d probably draw the line if we brought him inside.
Next we found ourselves at Piazza Grande. It was the International Red Cross Day and there was a large event celebrating in the piazza. The “Croce Rossa Italiana” employees made a fuss over Koji as we walked around. He was only too happy for the attention. In this square we also found a company store featuring balsamic vinegar that had been in production since 1604. We went in for a vinegar tasting. Who knew that vinegar was such “a thing”. I cannot (cannot) believe how delicious these vinegars were. One of them had been aged for 25 years! We left with a large bag and one too many ideas of how to use it!
Some more shopping and browsing. We stumbled upon an excellent food market. We bought some cheeses and tortellini (what the region of Emilia Romano is known for).
Our unplanned wandering found us strolling down cobblestoned streets and under countless porticos (for which this region is known. As we continued along Daren stopped and pointed out the cutest coffee shop. We stopped in for a quick espresso at the counter. We were feeling very Italian. As we’ve come to learn, Italians stop into to cafes like these throughout the day and order espressos which they down quickly while standing at the counter. While there, we met and chatted (in Italian) with one of the Red Cross staff who was taking a break. Check out the year of this coffee shop on the little espresso cup! We love how old and full of history everything is.
The day concluded with a bit more meandering and a stop at the Pavarotti statue. Pavarotti, among the greatest opera tenors ever, is from Modena. Koji was starting to get tired. I think we all were, so we heading back home where we had a lovely sunset appetizer dinner with the cheese we bought, our favorite bread (from Lidl of all places), the vinegars we purchased and the very last of the olives that we brought back from my family’s olive grove in Calabria.
A final dog walk, some showers and a little TV/couch time closed out the evening and the week. Today marks 10 weeks that we have been here.
Meanwhile – check out the cleaned up wordpress site where this and all the other Italy blogs live, along with a lot more stuff. A brief explanation is below.
Take a look around by clicking the link above that says esterinaanderson.
The site now opens directly to our Italy page, where we’ve organized the writing into our individual perspectives along with our shared travelogue (including posts like this one).
If you explore the other tabs at the top — Reflections, All the Flavor, and the Digital Shop — there’s a lot more tucked in there too.
Here’s a little mock-up below – which isn’t clickable, but shows what you will see when you open the site and what each tab is. Or feel free to wander through the site yourself. It’s finally starting to feel connected, organized, and a little more like home.
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!
It’s 9:03 at night. My body is exhausted. It’s 3pm back home.
Home… home is here for now. In Italy. It still feels too new to remember that without a little whiplash.
My mind is tired too—but wired. Jet lag has that strange rhythm where I can feel like I might fall asleep standing up, and then suddenly I’m wide awake again, almost normal. Until I get a good night or two of real sleep, I imagine I’ll feel a little disembodied—like I’m participating in my life, but it belongs to someone else.
But we are here. We are here. We did it! No other day ever will be the first day. It’s surreal. I’m too tired to be excited. Except for being tired, it feels oddly very normal. We are sitting on the sofa. There is no TV yet. Daren is reading. We are thinking about opening a laptop or iPad to watch something, but who are we kidding? We are exhausted.
Traveling Overseas with a Dog
The thing everyone wants to know about is Koji (the dog) and how we got him here. This was hands down the most worrisome part of the trip. It was such a great unknown. We had some idea of what would happen, but not really. And holy worry about how he’d feel and behave. If only he could understand human language, we could have warned him what was going to happen.
For anyone who hasn’t flown a dog in cargo before (I didn’t know anyone who has), let me say a little more about what happened.
We left from JFK. For Italy, the only direct flight that would take a dog was ITA, and because of his crate size (large – for a 70 lb dog) they couldn’t guarantee him on a flight until 72 hours before. Obviously that wasn’t going to work for us, so we had to fly non-direct through Frankfurt.
Koji had never been to an airport. We were concerned he’d be out of his mind with being overwhelmed, barking and sniffing like a lunatic. But weirdly he was normal. He just walked around next to us like he’d been doing this his whole life. There were a few barks when one of us had to stand in a different line – more or less to notify us that our group was broken up. But once we acknowledged that the human at his side knows where the other human is and has eyes on them, he was ok.
Once at JFK we had to check in at a special excess baggage area. Our other bags were checked at that time almost normally, but Koji’s check-in was different. We were to bring an airline-approved crate, large enough for him to stand and turn around. We did a lot of paperwork ahead of time, including a health exam 10 days prior to flying that needed to be perfectly timed to get his shipping information back from the USDA. We showed up with everything needed.
They didn’t take him right away. We were allowed to walk him around and bring him out to a pet relief area. They helped us time his departure from us perfectly so we had time to get through security with him having the least amount of time in the crate.
Koji hadn’t been in a crate in almost 12 years. To prepare for this, we brought the crate near his dog bed in the house several weeks ago. We made it seem normal and like a safe place. We had him sit in there for short periods at first, then with the door closed, then longer periods with the door closed. By the time we got to the airport yesterday, with all the excitement of the ride and the stimulation of the airport, he was sniffing his crate as if he wanted to go in there and shut out all the outside stimulation.
Finally the time came where we walked with him over to TSA. He dutifully went in and was loaded on a cart. He squeaked a little, didn’t bark, and we reassured him with positivity that this was ok, it wasn’t against our wishes. And we left.
That was hard, but we did it!
I’d love to say we didn’t worry about it or didn’t talk about him very much, but that would be untrue. I will say, though, that I thought about it and fretted about it a smidge less than I imagined I would.
Once in Rome we weren’t sure how to collect him either. No one really told us. I am scratching my head in hindsight about why we didn’t ask, but it also turned out not to be that big of a deal.
We followed the signs to the excess baggage, but when we saw it we didn’t think it possible that our dog would come out of there. I stayed near the area and the carousel while Daren went to ask about it. Meanwhile I searched the internet about how to do this. Daren came back to confirm what I also found out – that we were in the right place and Koji would be coming out there.
We were both informed that he’d likely be delivered about 30 minutes after the bags came out. So I went to get us some coffee and croissants. I was only gone a few minutes, but when I got back – there was Koji in his crate!
Side note – it was mandatory to zip-tie the crate. Daren wondered how we’d get the zip ties off if we couldn’t carry scissors with us in our carry-ons. I assured him that the airline would be aware of this and bring out something to cut the zip ties.
Also, a side note – which was quite funny: we had to tape his food and water to the top of the crate. So we were running around with zip ties and duct tape – like kidnappers or something. But no scissors.
Well I was wrong and Daren was right to question this. The porter (a non-English-speaking Italian porter, that is) came out and was surprised to see zip ties. No scissors in sight anywhere. I came back while Koji was practically levitating in his crate with excitement, and the porter was using a key to slowly saw away at the zip tie.
We finally got him out. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I’d be remiss not to say that I was surprised Koji was just himself. Very thirsty, but more or less his normal goofy self.
We collected our bags and proceeded to the car rental area. Koji trotted alongside me and the trolley cart like he’d been doing this his whole life. He even seemed to know where to go. I’m sure that was his nose picking up on the trail that many humans have traveled before us from baggage to the rentals, but it was weirdly and quickly business as usual for him.
On the way to the airport in the van transport, smiling! Trotting around the outside of the airport like it’s something he does on the regularChillaxing on the floor of JFK in front of his crate Made it to the other side! Just out of the crate. “Helping” daddy get the bags on the trolleySitting out on the porch with us – just like at home! Resting after the longest day of his dog life
DAY 2
We are just finding our way about.
Yesterday we hit up the stores to stock up on food and essentials. Our landlord and realtor highly suggested a shopping area that has a “Media World,” which is a Best Buy equivalent, and a really large grocery store. It’s kind of like a Walmart, but with more food and fewer non-food items. Not at Walmart prices though.
We were seriously there almost 3 hours. It was truly epic trying to find things in another language. I mean a lot of stuff is the same, like fruits and veggies, but things with labels in cans and boxes are not. I was undertaking the process of finding baking supplies. Some things I just couldn’t find and gave up and ordered on Amazon. Baking soda and baking powder were among the few.
We got back home and unloaded all the loot. That, plus making dinner and walking the dog, wiped us out for the rest of the day. We did squeeze in a short hike down the street where our landlord suggested.
Today was a true feat and success. We ventured out to get new Italian phone numbers and purchase a washer and dryer. Back to the Media World store we went, with some memorized words in Italian on our tongues, to do both – yes both. There is apparently a wireless service in this Media World.
We level-set our expectations based on the day before, anticipating that we would be in the store for a very long time.
We were quickly sidetracked. When we pulled into the parking lot Daren got a notification that our boxes from the States had been attempted for delivery, but the driver turned around because we didn’t answer the door. We’d only left like 10 minutes before! Of course that’s when they came.
We looked into the Send My Bags service we used and for some forsaken reason it said that if we weren’t home, to leave it with a neighbor, but the “neighbor” was a Tabaccheria. Huh?
A Tabaccheria, by the way, is a small corner type of 7/11-ish store with more cigarettes and lotto tickets than food, but the same idea.
We ended up sitting in the car on a live chat trying to figure out how we could pick up our boxes at a local DHL. We were so bummed to miss this delivery. We finally got it sorted and saw that we’d be able to pick up our boxes the next day.
Satisfied, we put on our armor and trudged back into Media World to attempt to communicate in a foreign language.
Amazingly – we walked out about an hour later with a washer and dryer on order, arriving by delivery with installation next week – AND new SIM cards and phone numbers.
Trying to figure out words and understand them is exhausting but also exhilarating. We were so excited that we’d accomplished this that we took ourselves out for lunch. We went to the piazza in town to one of the only places that was open. It was the kind of place my father would have loved and I would have hated, but the food was good! And quite inexpensive. However, we spent the whole meal messing around with our phones trying to figure out how to keep and use our American phone numbers and use the Italian data plan. With some Google and ChatGPT we were able to configure it all without too much fanfare.
At the end of lunch I checked my email and saw that 11 Amazon packages had arrived. Yikes! Then weirdly Daren got an email that our boxes from the U.S. were indeed delivered to a Tabaccheria. At the moment this Tabaccheria was closed and there were these boxes at home.
Side note: We are learning that almost all places close around 1pm and re-open around 3:30–4. They are serious about a lunch break! Wow. I can’t even fathom it. Most places open at 9 and then close at 7. It’s a 10-hour day, but with a really long break in between. I’m not sure how I feel about this yet.
We went back home to tend to these boxes. I was imagining how cramped we were probably making the walk past our apartment, and it turns out I wasn’t wrong!
Next we were off to the Tabaccheria to get our boxes from home, and entered the address in the GPS. This all seemed so crazy and we thought there was a slim chance our boxes would be there, especially considering how we asked them to be sent to DHL. We pulled into this tiny side street and waited a few minutes in the car until they re-opened at 3:30. We walked in with the Italian word for boxes just looked up and on our tongues, and behold… all 5 of our boxes were there! It was so exciting.
We grabbed them, came back home, and unpacked and unpacked. I assembled a coat rack. Daren messed around with installing a new TV our landlord dropped off. And exhausted… we had leftovers for dinner.
Daren went for his first run while I think I napped. He took these amazing photos.
Day 4
Just like at home I’m already returning stuff from Amazon. We hit up a Farmers Market. I finally found ginger. We stopped at a new grocery store and found cottage cheese! We were so happy. It was otherwise an uneventful day. I finally had most of the ingredients and implements to make our favorite things. We went home to open more boxes. I went to work making chocolate chip cookies, my favorite oatmeal nearly zero-point Weight Watchers cookies, compote, and my beloved ginger tea.
Day 5
First trip to Florence. Ever. It was a dual-purpose trip. One, to drop off our rental car and pick up our car subscription that we’d be using for the year. And the other reason was to declare my presence in Italy with the state police (Questura).
Mentally preparing to get yelled at by the Questura
The street navigation was the most annoying thing. At the moment Daren is furiously typing about it. I’ll let him elaborate.
The Questura, for what I needed to do, was quite a simple process, but a very long wait. My citizenship lawyer warned me about this so I was prepared. Everyone jokes here about Italian bureaucracy, but in all honesty it’s not that different from U.S. bureaucracy. I needed to do many things to prepare for this trip and to apply for Italian citizenship, and one of them was to get paperwork from the Department of Social Security. I speak the language, knew what I needed, and felt obviously confident enough to communicate this, but I also was prepared in the U.S. to get yelled at by a cranky federal employee (and I wasn’t wrong, I was talked to like I was a complete idiot) – both times I had to go down.
Side note: Why just me at the Questura, dnd why did we have to go? Well Daren got Irish citizenship a few years ago and can be in the EU without fanfare. And I can too for now with the 90-day pass American citizens have. But I will be applying for Italian citizenship as soon as a final piece of paper arrives. If we had flown directly into Italy and I came through the EU borders through Italy I wouldn’t have had to make this Questura stop. But because we had Koji and flown in through Germany, Italy didn’t know I was there so I had to let them know.
While at the Questura with my ticket to wait in line, Daren and Koji went to return the rental car. The area at the Questura was immigration. Here in Italy I am an immigrant. There were people from all over the world and walks of life and ages speaking all kinds of different languages. The main language the employees speak, of course, is Italian with very little English. Like in the U.S., the staff feel like if you will be in Italy you should try speaking Italian (who can blame them?). It was overwhelming and humbling to be there amongst all these other people trying to keep their paperwork in order.
I heard 3 women about my age speaking English with one another, each with different foreign accents. They were talking about how to cleanse from the negative energy of the Questura and the city. This was a conversation right up my alley! I went over to them and said I couldn’t help but overhear their exchange. They welcomed me, we exchanged names and countries of origin, and talked non-stop for the next hour or so. They all lived in Florence and were there for different reasons. All of them love yoga, one was even a yoga teacher. She and I exchanged contact information through WhatsApp. That was lovely. I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again, but it was nice to just speak English and meet new people.
This trip Beat Me Up. I was ready to call it a day by noon when I was done at the Questura but we pushed through it. We had lunch at an Indian place that allowed Koji to come inside – yes INSIDE! They gave him water (which he was very grateful for) and we enjoyed our first Indian meal (so good!).
We walked around a bit worried about how Koji would behave in a city. He is a well-traveled dog. He boated with us and visited our kids in college with us. He’s been up and down the East Coast and even to Canada, but he has spent very little time in cities. He surprised us by trotting alongside us like he’s been doing this his whole life! So we made our way from the car rental at the train station to the Duomo. Neither Daren nor I were wearing comfortable shoes. And the dog was kind of beat so we stopped there. But we felt victorious for making it to a monument, getting a car, and checking off this annoying task I had to do at the Questura.
Coffee and other things we are getting used to
Everyone knows that Europeans, Italians in particular, love strong black coffee. Small cups. When my father (from Italy) used to come to my house and see the cups of coffee we drank he would be annoyed. Every single time he had something to say about it. (Weirdly I remember my mother loving coffee just as much and making the same normal-size American cups and him not saying a word about it… but that is besides the point.) I know this intellectually. I’ve seen it. The rest stops have coffee counters with miniature cups. They look like something a child would play with in a tea set. The natives order their coffee, scoot to this counter, and drink this mini cup in record time and move on. I’m not sure what the purpose is except to caffeinate.
When our rental came with an American coffee maker I was quite happy. Daren does like the small strong black coffee and kind of said something to the effect of when in Rome, but I insisted that for me we keep this American coffee maker. The first day we were here we went to the only open grocery store (Lidl – yes, the same chain as in the U.S.) and bought a small super vacuum-packed bag of coffee, which was the only kind of coffee sold. We were jet-lagged, came back to our new home, and made coffee. It was delicious. The cups provided at the rental were quite small, and even though the coffee maker said 10 cups, it was about a cup and a half each.
To make a long story short…. After purchasing, then returning, mini coffee scoops…. And then buying a nice (I LOVE it) American coffee maker…. 10 cups in these European models do not mean what 10 cups in American models mean. There is no other size coffee scoop than the one we bought (and returned, thinking we bought too small a size). It is what it is. Even “American” coffee here is smaller. So we will either adjust to having about ½ the amount of coffee we enjoy in the morning or make 2 pots. Either way it was a week-long learning curve.
That is just one of the many silly things that tripped us up.
• How to navigate through a toll booth • Opening plastic tops from bottles • The necessity of weighing produce and putting a sticker on it to purchase it • Driving in downtown cities with secret zones where you need a pass (Daren will say more about) • 2 size plugs, the smaller type not being the converter size sold at airports and other places outside the EU zone
Daren’s take on Driving in Italy
Of all the adjustments an American needs to make while settling into life in Italy, I suspect that none are more challenging than learning how to handle a car and navigate in this new country. At first pass things seem very similar to home: cars drive on the right. Stop signs and traffic lights look the same, and cities are connected by an efficient system of highways with rest stops, overhead signs, construction alerts, and traffic updates. True, there are a lot more traffic circle and fewer traffic lights, but these are easy to handle and actually make driving smoother and more efficient. But after just a few days of driving, this comforting sense of similarity soon dissipates and the real differences become apparent. First, the roads: they are narrow, winding, and hilly. Even the highways, while extensive and well-marked, are much narrower with minimal shoulders and lots of curves and hills. While one gets used to this rather quickly, it requires a higher level of vigilance, especially since highway speeds tend to be faster than in the US, often 130km/hr (80 mph).
Getting gas is another learning experience. Where is the gas cap? How does it open? In our first vehicle the front door needed to be open to expose and open the cap. How do you activate the pump and pay? In one gas station you had to go to a pay station first and tap or insert your card. In others, you pump first and then pay inside. Not so difficult to handle, but just slightly different than our pay-at-the-pump simplicity in the US. And – these differences while nicely marked are in a foreign language so knowing what to do at each one presents a little more of a challenge.
Highway tolls are similar to the US and are easy to manage once you figure out the different lanes. You take a ticket when entering and, when exiting, either insert it into a machine and pay by tapping a credit card, or hand it to an attendant and pay them, depending on which toll booth lane you choose. Like the US, Italy has an “Easy Pass” that allows you to avoid cards and cash. Be careful not to accidentally drive through the “Easy Pass” lane as we did on our first sojourn. In so doing on entering the highway, we had no ticket with which to pay when we exited, requiring us to sneak through the gap in the toll gate! I am sure that the police are looking for us as it was added to a growing list of unintended infractions that we’ve been accumulating.
The other major violations we’ve committed occurred while driving in cities and entering zones where we weren’t allowed. Frustratingly, Apple or Google Maps knows nothing about this and simply maps out the best route to get to your destination, infraction zones be damned! We drove on streets indented only for buses and taxis. We nearly drove onto a tram track. Then we innocently drove on several streets that can only be accessed with “special permission”. These zones are indicated by a digital sign reading “ZTL” for Zona a Traffico Limitato. If it says “ ZTL Attivo”, that means it’s active and you need a special pass to enter. There is a sensor and a traffic camera capturing the identity of each car passing into the Zona. If you don’t have a digital sensor, like and Easy Pass, which you’ve paid for to enable you to pass into these zones, your plate is recorded and fines will be forthcoming. Add to this the fact that city streets are incredibly narrow. Motorcycles and souped up Vespas are flying all around you, trucks are double parking in front of Medieval walls and ancient stone buildings, all while clueless pedestrians (Americans no doubt), are swarming all around with little regard for cross walks.
Then suddenly a road becomes a market and you have to squeeze past food and vegetable stalls, cafes, and throngs of shoppers. Chairs and tables may need to be moved to enable your errant car to pass. And then suddenly a paved road changes to cobblestones and our dental fillings are all jarred out onto the floor mats.
After surviving a drive into Florence to address some bureaucratic residency paperwork and exchange rental cars, we vowed never to drive into an Italian city again, assuming we are not already banned from driving at all by the Italian police. There is a reason why Italy has an excellent system of trains and trams. They are there to help people avoid driving modern vehicles on streets designed for mules, horses, and maybe an occasional oxcart.
For now
This morning it’s Saturday (3/7/26 or as in Italy would be writting 7/3/26), and we finally feel a bit settled. We put together this blog and spent the morning over coffee, writing, and reminiscing about the week we just had. We wanted to capture it all before it’s a distant memory! Onto the next.
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