I lived the most part of my life in Washington DC, now in Italy getting to know again my country. Plenty of surprises, for good and bad, and lots of nostalgia for DC.
Opatija I know that this is no time to start packing suitcase, but the right time will come, eventually. The sooner the better. I visited Croatia often enough. It is close to where I live. A–not always so–pleasant car ride, but the main reason to travel to Croatia in COVID times is the Dentistry Industry […]
I was always fascinated by the story of St. Mark, whose remains are richly guarded under the main altar inside the Basilica of San Marco in Venice. Especially when I look at the beautiful mosaic on the facade of the Basilica where the remains of San Marco are covered with a blue sheet… like he […]
Cheeses Made in Italy It was not easy at all to write about cheese. There are so many that i was at loss. I didn’t know if I should list them alphabetically, by region, by type, by the level of likability, or popularity. There are about 487 varieties of cheeses in Italy (but Wikipedia lists […]
Giovanni Rana is the grandfather that all marketing students would like, the real savvy of the “large-scale retail trade” hype. Here is his new product Sweet chocolate ravioli by Giovanni Rana, a limited edition from the famous supermarket pasta factory. The product that was first launched in 2009 (with little success), but now in the […]
Because of Social Media there are soo many recipes out there, and with COVID Restrictions, even more surfaced. I always thought that I do not want to compete with all that, instead to talk about a more general indication on the food habits in Italy, and culinary products. I also thought that all those were […]
With the closure of regular restaurants because of COVID there is a flourishing of Take-Out, Home-Delivery and the like. What was once a novelty and an extravagant way of life for most Italians, now it is a de facto thing! The choices are plentiful! Pizza, which it was always a Take-Out thing, but now one can […]
American Politics kept us glued to our preferred source of information, whther iPhone or the traditional TV, we spent days on end watching or reading the news. In the meantime in Italy we had our own political dramas. A government crisis is nothing new, and this one was brewing for the past month or two. […]
Acqua Alta occurs when winds from the south, south-east blow for a long time, with a force of more than 25 kilometers per hour (or 13.4989 knots). These winds push seawater into the lagoon. The water enters through the open mouths in the long sandbar that, from Chioggia to Punta Sabbioni, acts as a barrier […]
This was a year that we shall all remenber. The color theme of the Christmas decorations was blue. But the decorations were plentiful, with blue lights projected on the facades of our beautiful palazzi. Somehow Christmas looked more dismal to me and less merry. For all the bad things that happened, there was something good […]
I resumed my morning walks/runs this morning, and while I admire the beautiful mountains on the horizon it occured to me to think that 2020 was the most spitful year ever. In the past we didn’t have a single snow flake in the mountains by Xmas. This year instead, since nobody can leave his own […]
There is more than Christmas Day in Italy. We also have St. Stephen Day, a full-fledged holiday. In pre-COVID days it would be still a day with family, maybe the less immediate family. A good day, less stressful. Although this COVID year (after all our past complaining about a too much commercialized Christmas), with the […]