It turns out that not all playing cards are the same the world round. While in the US, I never once remember seeing anything aside from the standard 52-card deck, here in Italy, the 40-card deck is much more popular. And just to make matters more complicated, there are different […]
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One of the greatest advantages of living on the Mediterranean coast is that it doesn’t freeze here. Ever. Water pipes are laid carelessly above ground because they will never burst, citrus trees stand full of fruit in mid-December, plants have no need of greenhouses. For all those who say that […]
It’s pruning season here in Levanto, and that means time to get out your shears and get chopping. From where I stood today on my hilltop, I could hear the unmistakeable sounds of one chainsaw, one band saw, and one electric hedge-trimmer all going at the same time. It all […]
There really is no end to the infinite wonders of the world, and anyone cynical enough to believe that they’ve seen it all have very little imagination indeed. Here’s one for you: My local butcher Sandro, while grinding up some beef for Erica‘s enviable ragù sauce, tried to get me […]
Here in Levanto, there’s an apartment building in town with glassed-in balconies. On one of those balconies, the owner has painted over the glass with the paints that you always see used on shop windows. It is a bright, child-like scene of sky, sun, birds, clouds, and water … could […]
If you look closely at the photo above, you’ll see the remains of an old construction in the foreground, probably a small stone hut used for storing tools and for getting out of the sun while eating your lunch on hot days. There’s not much left of it now, and […]
No, this is not about hominids, but about the great and glorious Ape (pronounced AH-pay), a vehicle so diffused in Levanto that they should be building monuments to it. Made by Piaggio since just after the war, it is a three-wheeled pickup truck that originally was nothing more than a […]
I think what most fascinates me about the professional surfing world is not the glamorous side of it – great tans, fancy sponsors, chiseled physiques, screaming fans – but the lifestyle they have as professional athletes in a minor sport. If you take away some of the top earners, the […]
Fog is romantic at one precise moment … when walking across a bridge at twilight, hand in hand with your wife, the streetlights wearing halos and the moist air tingling your nose. The rest of the time, fog sucks. It is one of the primary reasons that we got the […]
My father, a born Doubting Thomas, has always been suspicious of the existence of wild boar (cinghiale in Italian) in Italy. After spending three weeks in Tuscany a few years ago, he calculated that based on the number of restaurants serving wild boar in various forms (stew, steak, sausage, jerky, […]