Popular legend says that Liguria has an unusually high number of nonagenarians running around. While I have never seen any statistics about this fact, casual observation seems to bear it out. Any number of the people I know in Levanto, be they friends or acquaintances, have grandfathers, grandmothers, or great-grandparents […]
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They are heralded as one of the great works of mankind, the collective labor of man against nature, turning an inhospitably steep landscape into arable bits of turf on which to scratch out a living. The terraces of the Cinque Terre are one of the major highlights of visiting this […]
I saw a friend of mine on Fb complaining about the weather forecasts that seem to have kept a significant number of tourists from coming to Levanto and the Cinque Terre this long holiday weekend. His point was that the weather simply wasn’t so bad: not sunny, but warm and […]
When you own a piece of land that is part of a precious historical interchange between man and nature, you are inspired to do your best with it, even when it is a losing proposition financially and kicks your ass every time you hump up and down it trying to […]
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 […]
And after one week of rain, constant and incessant, the sun came shining out late this afternoon. For people who live at a seaside locale, it was like God himself was shining out at us, giving us a brief blessing and reminding us that sooner or later, the rain would […]
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 […]