Mille grazie

Many thanks to all my blogging friends who shared your love of Italy, experiences and information with me. It was truly a trip full of memories made richer with your ingredients - from Giotto, gelato, girasoli and shrines, sandwiches, laundry and leather belts. I will write soon but here are a few images for you!

To drive or not to drive ..

in Italy? Need your recommendations and suggestions. I've been to Italy over 6 times and never drove myself (interestingly)! I am one for 'public' transportation in foreign countries. However, this September, I am taking Ty for his first time to Italy and decided to do a B&B in a friend's Italian home-away-from-home, Paciano, in Umbria near the Tuscan border. Hence, the need for a car to visit the small towns and get to the train to Florence and/or Rome.

I know of the Italian propensity for driving fast and dangerously close. I have been told by others who have driven in Italy that being from Boston helps - notoriously discourteous and not law-abiding drivers - and to not look in the rear view mirror while driving. I guess my main concern is what happens if there's a car accident?

The other caveat is that I don't speak nor understand Italian (with the exception of a few curses and greetings). I could keep a translator handy but I am wondering how much of a problem this might be for conversing in smaller cities/towns.

Why Italy

I’m feeling nostalgic after reading all the posts about impending vacations abroad.


It could have been the spiritual connection that draws me in to Italy. It could be my cultural ancestry as well. It could be the enchanted and changing landscapes of each region, the masterful gastronomic and visual art, or the warm hospitality of the Italian people.


All I know is being seated at a noontime Mass in a small village among family members, hearing a Christian Mass recited in Latin, and listening to familiar liturgical songs being sung in Italian made me cry. All I know is that walking the quiet streets of Rome at 5:00 AM on a warm fall morning with a close friend who was then a newly-minted cancer survivor made me cry. All I know is that seeing Venice for the first time made me cry. All I know is that seeing David for the first time took my breath away and then made me cry.

All I know is I feel this wellspring each time I visit Italy.

Italian Films

I began created a home dvd library, stocking it with movies made in Italy. Romantic or suspense movies are my primary focus …Godfather, not soo much.

Would like to expand my library. Have any suggestions for other movies? This is what I have so far:

A Good Woman
Under the Tuscan Sun
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Dangrous Beauty
The Italian Job El Postino
Life is Beautiful

In anticipation

of the PhotoHunt this Saturday, I am posting 'bridge' photos that did not make my No. 1 Cut. I have a 'thing' about photographing bridges. The first is taken from a boat entering Nantucket Harbor (it might be hard to see but a small walkway bridge connecting the road; probably one of my most interesting places to visit Spain, the old road into Toledo is beside Nantucket; and last (but not least) is Italy, Casel Sant'Angelo.

PhotoHunt: View

If I'm breaking any rules, it's not intentional. I'm just too tired from a week of busyness to make a decision. So, I give you Views from four of my favorite places in the world:

Orvieto for its sensibleness, simple and exquisite beauty. The fog had not yet lifted which made for an eery backdrop to the iron scrollwork.

Rome for its reverence in history, steeped in tradition.

The Alhambra in Granada for its mysteriousness - and at dusk it's magical!

Kaneohe, taken from the Pali Highway in Hawaii -- just because .. way too many warm thoughts to list here.

We Are Who We Are

Pride and Passion - a program from PBS - wonderfully nostalgic (to me anyway) that could have been taking a page/write a book about my family. The Italian traditions (holidays with relatives bursting out of the rooms of the house along with the gastronomic overabundance of carbo-rich foods and pastries) and familial roles (momma nona rules, aunts, uncles, cousins) but also the shared sentiments of both my grandparents and parents about being the 'immigrant family' - thus, the lowest in the societal order. I'm the 'American with an Italian ancestry' that was described in this piece. My grandparents were the 'Italian-Americans', and my parents were the 'American-Italians', first generation U. S. born. Both were eager to improve the world of their children and were willing to endure, sometimes with denegration, ridicule for their seemingly foreign ways. But their strong family bonds and vibrant culture sustained them. And that survivorship was passed to the newer generations.

Even though their reason for leaving their homeland was the sense of new opportunity, the risks they faced still seem daunting to me. The North End of Boston in the '60s is the closest I will get to understanding my parents' lives growing up as immigrant children in the early part of this century. My mom's family shared a three-bedroom flat with 10 siblings and one bathroom on Snowhill Street - directly across from the Copps Hill Burial Ground, where my cousins and I played tag. My dad was one of 7 boys in a three-bedroom flat on Prince Street. I couldn't stand 10 years of sharing a room with one sister.

But, the desire to understand these older times is one of the reasons I enjoy the small Italian towns. One day I hope to venture on my own to Avellino, to walk the streets of my ancestors, to whet this passion for connecting, understanding, immersion.

Opening Doors

I thought of this photo that I took from Civita today while I was facilitating an introduction of two people from the East and West Coast in a marketing effort.

I actually think that the Slow Travel Board (link on my home page)solidified my wanting to see this walled city, Civita di Bagnoregio. Orvieto and Civita - now two of my favorite out-of-the-way cities.....

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” ~ Thick Nhat Hahn

Could be Italy

but it's not. It's the North End of Boston. A place my grandparents emigrated to from Italy - Avellino to be exact.

My family, along with cousins, aunts and uncles would travel into this piece of Americana == back to their neighborhoods. It was a yearly ritual every Sunday in August to lean out the tenement windows on pillows and watch the processions of Momma Nonas shrouded in black and barefoot, praying the rosary behind the hoisted statue of the saint for the celebrated feastday. A few of my uncles were the bearers of the statues. And, apparently quite a few of us, the second and third Italian-Americans share these traditions. I overheard a father telling his young teen daughter an almost identical story as mine.

These photos were taken at the Fishermen's feast. The largest feast is, of course, St. Anthony's, on the last weekend of August.

My Hawaiian fiance is liking the fried dough, a staple of these festivals. My family called them 'johnny cakes'. I don't have an explanation of why they are called johnny cakes. Googled them and defined as made with cornmeal. Not so in this family - and I think that is pretty much a generic term for Boston - at least. If anyone knows the history of this, I would appreciate hearing it. Mahalo!