So Why Italy?

Great question that I have indeed asked myself more than a few times.  Why Italy and not Spain, or France, or Greece?

All good suggestions and certainly places considered, but it mostly came down to one deciding factor: Food. I like to eat and I like to cook and Italian regional cuisines as well as cheese and olive oils and breads are the kind of things i dream about and make heroic attempts at creating. 

I've been to Paris and love love love the city of lights, it's culture and people. To date, no, no one has ever been rude to me in Paris. Well, maybe that one waiter in a cafe in the Tuileries on a beautiful April day who snubbed us and refused to wait on us or even look at us for 40 minutes until we got up and left.  God knows what needle got stuck up his butt that day, but he was the exception. Maybe it's because I always, always make the effort when travelling to learn at least the basics of becoming conversational in the language of the each country (though French has always been a steep hill to climb for me) and speak in my own caveman fashion.  I've found that properly phrasing and correctly conjugating verbs is far less important than making a human connection with the person in the market stall, your waiter or cafe owner, the person sitting across from you on the train or bus.  Smiles and effort and being human carry a lot of water.  The best words I made a point of mastering in Italian before my first trip was, "Mi Italiano e non forte o perfetto, ma Io provo. ...but I try!

And I've been all over Spain and muchas adoro the people, the food, and omg, the music!! The slowed down and forgiving pace of life. Spain was a contender when I landed in a job I love which allows me to work from any location, in any time zone and I realized, Hell yeah, this is the opportunity to travel in a more rooted fashion and really become a part of the community I enter.

But I chose Italy.  Rome and the North in the Emilia-Romangna regione. I chose it for the pasta, I chose it for the ciabatta, the amatriciana, the arrabiata, the wine and limoncello, but mostly for the breakfasts.

I love espresso and i love a pasticceria in the morning. Simple light and packing a power to launch you into a life mode that really defines the whole mysterious dolce vita thing.  It hit me last year when on a driving trip through Southern Italy, in the wilds of Puglia,  found myself rocketing through the countryside in a Fiat (of course)  just after a stop at a bar for a fast colazione, fueled on 3 espressos and a cornetto filled with lemon cream and suddenly it hit me that at that exact moment I felt more alive, more comfortable in my skin, more bursting with, with just everything than I'd ever felt in my entire life. It was like I was seeing the word in technicolor after a lifetime of faded black and white.  It was how I was meant to feel and how I wanted feel like that again and again.

Here's a photo taken at almost the precise moment of my epiphany.  Good god, what a day that was. pristine vineyards, green verdant hills, small hillside towns with the only traffic congestion from some sheep and their guardian dogs 

making me wait a few minutes while they went about their timeless business,  not to mention lovely friendly humans everywhere we stopped and a sun that hit me like a golden hammer.



Oh sorry, I was getting all poesy there.  That'll happen, can't be helped. But you get my point. I'd found a feeling, a part of me that needed to be felt and to be brought out to see daylight.

So here I am roughly  year later coming back for more adventures. This time not just a quick flash through Rome and a meander through the South, but in residence, with time to make friends, have dinner parties, wander alleys and streets in Rome without rush or purpose othen to to perhaps find a bookstore or a place for a suppli and a glass of prosecco.

I always knew I'd be back, because that after 50 + years of life I finally felt like I was home.