I know a lot of us expats post beautiful pictures on our Instagram grids about how much we lOoOoOoove Italy and we would probably lick the dirty cobblestone in our flowery dresses and espadrilles and ROLL AROUND NAKED IN FRESH GNOCCHI if Covid wasn’t heavily floating around the country, but the truth is, Italy has a lot of work to do.
I usually have a glass of wine or four before writing on here so if this post is a little tame, it's because my creative juices have been RUDELY BLOCKED BY A ROUND OF ANTIBIOTICS. I, like most, am not a huge fan of the dentist. Having someone drilling, banging and renovating inside of my mouth [...]
If you've been following my home buying journey (if you haven't, you can find out more here and here), the entire home buying process for me has been anything but easy. To be honest, it PULLED ME APART AT THE SEAMS, made me cry over melted gelato, inspired me to drink wine until I could [...]
You know when you're on Instagram, and you're in so deep, like really deep, and you don't know how you got there? Yeah, that's what happened when I found Laura Manganaro one night. I had gone through I can't even tell you how many profiles, and scrolling down to like 2016 (DON'T ACT LIKE YOU [...]
The first time I fell in love with Italy — and with every 15-year-old Italian boy who said CIAO to me — was in 2005. I was 15 and my mom let me go on a 3-week summer trip to Morrone Del Sannio, the small — as in maybe 500 people live there full-time small — [...]
My cousin Michael died yesterday. He was 38. He married his wife Rebecca less than two years ago. It was a perfect September day in Ontario. On the morning of the wedding, I was jet-lagged after flying in from Italy the night before and was already wide awake at 4 am.
I would love to pretend this Italian home renovation process has been an incredibly inspirational and educational journey, sprinkled in silver linings and dipped in expensive Italian wine with a side of spicy pecorino cheese, but it's been anything but that and I REFUSE to pretend I'm over here in Tuscany living my best life. This whole house renovating thing has been really hard.
While I was having my morning coffee and scrolling, I saw a picture of Agata with her gorgeous dog literally attached to her hip and I was like "WHO IS THIS BADASS WOMAN RUNNING IN THE ITALIAN WOODS WITH HER DOG ATTACHED TO HER HIP AND HOW CAN I GET TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT HER RIGHT NOW?"
Yesterday was my first day back at work since lockdown restrictions slowly began lifting here in Italy.
Yesterday was my 30th birthday. My original plan was to go to Southern Spain. Or Portugal. Or Ireland. But here I am, writing to you from my apartment, still in lockdown.
