Category Archives: Italy

La Conchiglia Beach Club in Procida, Italy

There are a few traditions that we like to repeat as often as possible and somehow we have settled upon an annual lunch at La Conchiglia in Procida as one of them. It is not a bad tradition to repeat as often as possible. La Conchiglia is a restaurant on the beach, which looks out […]

Climbing the Palermo Cathedral

rooftop of the Palermo Cathedral

I truly believe that Palermo is one of the most underrated cities in Italy. It has a mishmash of architectural styles, plenty of crumbling corners, sunburnt Sicilian colors, and a complicated but intriguing history. And the Palermo Cathedral manages to package all of this into one. The Palermo Cathedral was built in 1185, which is […]

Chinotto: A Hate Letter to an Italian Beverage

I have no loving words to bestow upon chinotto. To me, it is an Italian drink without redemption. Chinotto is baffling. Deeply bitter, darkly colored, and too lightly carbonated, I can’t stomach the liquid for long enough to find any complexity in its flavors. The drink is made with the fruit of a chinotto tree […]

How to Shop at an Italian Fresh Food Market

Palermo market

One of my favorite things about Italy are the amazing fresh food markets that you find in every town (or in each neighborhood in larger cities). Wandering through a market is one of the best ways to mingle with locals going about their daily lives, as well as to experience the food culture that makes Italy […]

Trattoria Serghei in Bologna, Italy

You know you have eaten well when you can pull up the memory of a meal as vividly as when you first sat down to enjoy it months earlier. I think back to my lunch at Trattoria Serghei in Bologna whenever a craving for handmade pasta strikes. The traditional wood-paneled dining room is truly tiny […]

Giving Birth in Italy

I am trying not to inundate the blog with information about what it was like to be pregnant in Italy, but at the same time, I know that when you ARE pregnant you are usually scrimping around for whatever information is available. SO, let’s talk about giving birth in Italy. Just as in many countries, […]

Festa della Repubblica: Italy’s June 2nd Holiday

planes releasing trails in green white and red for Italy's Republic Day on 2 June

Italy has only been a country for about 150 years, and before that was a series of independent city-states. When it was first united in 1861, its head of government was king Vittorio Emanuele II di Savoia. Less than 100 years later, the Italian monarchy came to an end and Italy’s June 2nd holiday celebrates […]