We are not big shoppers. Our kitchen isn’t exactly adorned with Waterford crystal and Williams-Sonoma; we don’t wear or carry Gucci or Prada; and the entire combined cost of our wardrobe between the two of us probably barely breaks three digits.

But when we travel, one of our favorite things to do is discover artisan shops. Some of our most treasured possessions are purchases from single-artist studios – leather workers, ceramic artists, weavers and knitters – that we’ve either sought out or stumbled upon in our travels. Besides being good for the local economy, buying from these artisans lets us feel connected to the places we’ve visited. Especially when they’re in out-of-the-way places (as they usually are, given our “Little Roads” style of travel), we often have the chance to chat with and get to know the artists, sometimes right there in their work studio.

Our research trips in Italy and Ireland and elsewhere help us keep current with the information that we share with our clients – restaurants, shops, sightseeing spots – as well as being a nice excuse to revisit some of our favorite places. We’ve just returned from a 10-day trip – with our cats and all! – to one of the most beautiful and iconic areas of Italy: The Val d’Orcia.

For centuries, Monte Cimino has been highly regarded as a source of excellent chestnuts, and Soriano’s annual Sagra delle Castagne - the Chestnut Festival - reflects this pride in the mountain’s bounty.

The Sagra is a three-week long medieval celebration in Soriano, and it dominates the town for the first three weeks of October. Wooden gates, towers, and other medieval structures transform the streets; shopkeepers sport wooden signage with period artistic designs.

And this year I got to walk in the Corteo Storico - the historic procession of the four Rioni of Soriano, led by representations of the local nobility, followed by their own particular personages - all in authentic medieval or Renaissance outfits.

Our podcast, Little Roads Unfiltered: Italy and Beyond, is set to wrap up our first season next week, with our eleventh episode.

We release “Halloween in Italy” on 28 October 2025. We’ll chat about the way this holiday is celebrated in Italy compared to in the US, and we’ll recount some of our own personal Halloween experiences since we moved here six years ago.

Three weeks after we launched our podcast "Little Roads Unfiltered" in early September, we reached the “500 downloads” benchmark.

Here are just a few of the episodes we’ve posted so far – and we’ll release a new episode every Tuesday.

In each episode we chat about different aspect of our lives here in Italy - working here as musicians, living here as residents - as well as lots of travel tips and planning strategies, visiting some of our favorite places to visit in Italy and beyond - from Chianti to County Cork.

We record live on our balcony in Soriano nel Cimino, so you’ll hear the sounds of our neighborhood and our town - trains, dogs barking, church bells, scooters, tractors, neighbors chatting - as well as our own cats occasionally dinging around.

After many readers’ suggestions that we do so, we’ve launched a Little Roads podcast!

We talk about what it’s like to live and work in Italy; and we discuss myriad travel tips, destinations (in Italy, Ireland, and elsewhere), and slice-of-life stories.

We record straight from our balcony in Soriano nel Cimino. Our chats are “unfiltered”, with the sounds of our little town always in the background.

Our “theme music” is Matt’s own swing arrangement of Puccini’s “O Babbino Caro”, which we recorded in one take right here in our house.