It is with some embarrassment that I tell you that I hated Genoa the first time I visited there, a decade and a lifetime ago. In my book, the only mention I make of the seaside city – the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, the location where Marco Polo was imprisoned for a year (because Italy…
The emergency porchetta was my favorite part of the trip. That is a strange thing to say for a lot of reasons. For one, I don’t know if the concept of emergency porchetta is widely known. A Google search for the term reveals four results, the most salient of which is someone looking for cooking…
I am not the first to discover Bar Luce. Designed by filmmaker Wes Anderson, it opened in 2015 and I did not learn of its existence until 2017, which is a lifetime in the world of the hip and the trendy. It sits on the outskirts of Milan, crowded with flawlessly beautiful and bored looking…
There are a few things that you should know about the World’s Fair. First off, it still exists. I, too, was surprised.
I don’t really understand fashion. Fortunately, I live in the Pacific Northwest. In my corner of the country, I once saw someone wear cargo shorts to a wedding, and there’s a grey-haired, bearded guy who runs around my neighborhood in a rainbow colored skirt, juggling scarves, and absolutely no one cares. It’s wonderful. Recently, though,…
It is a hot night in Milan. It reminds me of when I was in Cambodia. The next day I will look it up and find that it was, in fact, just as hot. Temperatures in the high nineties, the humidity hovering around 80%, nary a breeze to disturb the swarms of mosquitoes. On that night, the…
Milan doesn’t really feel like Italy. It lacks the craziness of the south, the noise and chaos that flows through my veins and feels like home. But it is lovely nonetheless. Here is the Duomo in the sunlight.
I know I was supposed to go Capri and love it. That just what people do – they paddle through the Blue Grotto and eat pizza at a cafe and fall in love with the place. But none of that happened during our visit. The grotto was closed on account of weather, and seemingly every…
That miserable and storied month of February now over, I am acutely aware of how anxious and unhappy I was throughout. This didn’t occur to me while it was happening; only after the trapeze artist is safely on the ground again do you realize you were holding your breath the entire time. And you…
