Little Roads Launches New "Explorer Service"
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Engage Little Roads’ new “Explorer Service” to investigate a place in Italy that’s important to you…
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New Year's Eve in Florence
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As our Little Roads readers know, we typically avoid large towns and big tourist hot-spots. But for the past two years we’ve made an exception to this “rule”: We’ve taken a room at a hotel in Florence with a balcony right on the main Piazza Duomo, to enjoy the chaos and celebrations of New Year’s Eve – but from high above it all.
Read MoreSant'Antonio: A Bonfire and Animal Blessings
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This morning was one of my favorite annual events in our little town of Soriano nel Cimino: the Blessing of the Animals, for the Feast of St Anthony. The night before, there are fireworks, and a huge bonfire in the town piazza. Everyone gathers around to get warm by the fire, there are stands with food and drink, and a lot of neighbors greeting each other.
Read MoreOld Places with an Old Friend
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My old friend John was visiting Italy this week, and we carved out a good chunk of time for the two of us to explore a few ancient places near our home town of Soriano nel Cimino. We went to a few places that Zeneba doesn’t want to go to - either because it’s a scramble up and down muddy paths, or it’s a tunnel so far underground that she fears imminent collapse - despite having held up for millennia.
Read MoreRecipes: How Zen Lost 30 lbs in 5 Months Naturally
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If you’re a listener of our “Little Roads Unfiltered: Italy and Beyond” podcast, you may have landed on this article from the show notes from our recent episode.
In that chat, we detailed the “adventures” of our questionable eating habits that we developed shortly after moving to Italy in 2019; the VERY alarming blood test results we received a few years later; and the subsequent diet turnaround that led to me dropping about 30 pounds in a pretty short time – as well as improving cholesterol numbers and other dire markers.
Here, as promised, are the recipes that we mentioned in the podcast – as usual with most of my recipes, quantities and other instructions are sometimes estimated, improvised, or otherwise “flexible”.
Read MoreArtisans in Italy and Ireland
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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.
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