What I’m Returning to: A Meditation on Simple Pleasures
This month’s blog is a reflection on a few very simple things that I find myself turning to in a time of chaos and major life changes. It’s really just a list, and while the items on it might seem simple, they provide me with an infinite and complex amount of comfort, groundedness, and distraction […]
The Spectacle of Italian Culture: Milan–Cortina 2026
What the Milano–Cortina opening ceremony ultimately showcased was not spectacle for its own sake, but a distinctly Italian idea of excellence: quietly exacting, deeply cultivated, and never divorced from beauty. Excellence here was not about speed or scale, but mastery. The kind of mastery that comes from apprenticeship, from knowing where you come from, and […]
Florence Finds: Three Spaces Worth Discovering
• Small and impactful: how La Città dei Lettori proves that when it comes to cultural value, size doesn’t matter. • Creative regeneration: The Square as a case study in how former industrial sites can become vibrant cultural hubs. • Adaptive reuse: the Goldoni → FitActive transition as a reflection of changing urban uses from […]
My Favorite Things (about the holidays in Italy)
I won’t be in Italy for the holidays this year which is a little unusual. Since Giada was little, I’ve preferred to stay in Florence. I’m not a big fan of traveling when everyone else does, and I love spending time in a cozy, decorated house cooking and baking to Christmas music. It’s also such […]
Unanchored
Is Florence still my home? Of late, I wake several times a night, gripped by something I’m still unable to name. Is it solitude? Worry? Fear? Regret? Restlessness? I look out my window and stare at the darkness, hopeful for answers that never come. If I’m lucky, I get a little call from a particularly […]
We Need Romcoms Now More than Ever
Market Research I began binging romcoms and romances set in Italy in the name of market research as soon as I finished writing my first novel, a nostalgic, sexy, coming-of-age romp through 1995 Florence (for anyone who’s reading this, I’m seeking representation and think it would make a great movie or limited series). I’ve always […]
You Get What You Pay For: Underconsumption, Minimalism, and Cultural Contaminations
Chi più spende meno spende For years, and I mean years, there were limited options in Italy when it came to shopping. You had to frequent small boutiques, of course there were national chains like Benetton and a few large department stores, but there were wasn’t even a mall near Florence. Many years ago a […]
Beyond the Sea
On Italian Beach Culture Italian beach culture can be a bit of a mystery for first time visitors. There are, of course, free beaches (usually you pay for parking only), but many beachgoers across the peninsula opt for the comfort of stabilimenti balneari, beach resorts, or at least they did so in the past. Typically, […]
Turning Points: On Raising a Bicultural Child
When I moved definitively to Italy at the age of 28 I wasn’t really thinking about having a baby. I was in love and trying to find gainful employment which was as hard then as it is now. I got married a year later, we bought our first apartment, and I began my career at […]
Summer (mostly) in the City
It’s been a while since I’ve spent the better part of the summer in Italy and for most of it I’ll be in Florence. This year is quite unusual and dictated primarily by my daughter’s eighteenth birthday which falls smack in the middle of the summer. Turning eighteen is a huge deal in Italy and […]