One of the great annual events in Levanto (actually, twice a year) is the Mangialonga, which translates into “The Long Eat.” Decisively different from the Long March, this is a celebration of local foods and local Medieval hilltop villages. Starting out from downtown Levanto, this day-long event takes you on […]
Levanto
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This is a story that can only happen in Italy, I think. We’ve moving into a new house, and because Levanto is a small town with very close ties between everyone, it turned out that the person whose parking spot I needed to borrow to put in a dumpster for […]
There is a relatively new tradition in Levanto, going back 12 consecutive years, of diving into the Mediterranean at noon on New Year’s Day. It’s called “Il Cimento”, a word that I still have not been able to translate. Last year, for our first New Year’s in Levanto, we watched […]
Olives waiting to be carted off to the press From the outset, I must admit that the title of this blog post is perhaps specious … no one really “makes” olive oil by themselves, not unless you are the owner of a very large piece of machinery, or you […]
[portfolio_slideshow autoplay=true navpos=disabled] Nothing about agriculture in the Cinque Terre is easy. This land is not made for easy. After a day in the fields, the thing that most hurts is the soles of your feet from trying desperately to keep yourself steady on the hill all the time. Last […]
My wife is researching the barefoot movement for an article, and all this talk of bare feet brought to mind a comment that I friend of mine here in Levanto made. Talking with one of the older, wiser women from the area, she told him how when she was a […]
[portfolio_slideshow autoplay=true navpos=disabled] In case anyone was wondering what the olive harvest looks like in Levanto and the Cinque Terre, here it is: lots of rain, lots of wind, lots of shaking of branches, and a whole lot of olives!
It is a foul and nasty night out there, just as it’s been a foul and nasty day, but that only serves to remind me that only a week ago, that’s right, on October 23, I took my last swim in the Mediterranean for the year 2012. My first dip […]
Daniele Moggia, an activist from Vernazza who was there during the floods of October 2012 and who has been a driving force in rebuilding the town and educating people about the fragility of the local environment, has just written a post about the most recent cry, after the small rock […]
It has been a long hot summer here in Levanto and the Cinque Terre, which I suppose most people would find encouraging after the epic destructive floods and landslides of last October. But be careful what you wish for, as your grandmother told you. Long hot summers mean dry grasses […]