I have already written about the joys and art of bottling your own wine in Italy. While it is undoubtedly a fulfilling and economically-sustainable practice (read: cheap), it is not without its pitfalls. Another one happened toady, inspiring me to give you a list of my most famous misadventures. In […]
Yearly Archives: 2012
For those who fly across oceans to visit Italy and make the Cinque Terre one of their many stops on a grueling two-week European vacation, hitting the beach is not usually on top of their list of priorities. For those who have more time to spend in Italy, coming to […]
There are two wines of importance that come from the Cinque Terre, but there is only one king: Sciachetrà, a straw wine of such goodness and scarcity that you can spent 100 bucks on a half-bottle of the stuff. The other, the crisp white Cinque Terre DOC, can be […]
When I was just a wide-eyed undergraduate doing a summer program in St. Petersburg in 1993, I spent the longest of the city’s famous White Nights in a countryside dacha, drinking heavily and speculating about Chekhov and the world. When we ran out of inane conversation topics I went out […]
The US has everything one could imagine in terms of natural beauty: mountains, rivers, deserts, forests, beaches, oceans, bays, cliffs, plains, lakes, islands, geysers, swamps, and moonscapes that rival the best to be found worldwide. That’s one of the reasons that so many Americans don’t travel outside the US. […]
A few days ago we hosted a wonderful American couple who had come to our home to experience something we call The Italian Family Dinner. When traveling, it can be nice to have a home-cooked meal once in a while, and so we open up our doors to travelers […]
The write-up in the Parma Daily Newspaper about the field trip that we led through the Cinque Terre.
For those of you passionate about cycling or who are just interested in another aspect of Italian cultural/sporting phenomena, the Giro d’Italia is one of those can’t miss experiences. While less famous than the Tour de France, the Giro is nonetheless one of the top-tier events on the international cycling […]
This weekend we had a group of 23 high school students from Parma here in Levanto for an outdoor field trip in the Cinque Terre. We spend a lot of time promoting our field trips specifically because they get the kids outside and moving, which is good for everyone. This […]
Five months of flat, glassy, waveless, imperturbable sea. The World Longboard Surfing Championships in Levanto came and went without a ripple on the water, leaving competitors listless and bored. The Mediterranean looked like a pond. Now, as it always has been and always will be, it is reborn. And it’s […]