Back in our “farming years,” we’d ride our old Gilera motorcycle to nearby Bettona for peach-picking in July. I’d rather hoe corn, muck the pig stalls or even help on the haying…
Many scholars maintain that the late Etruscan life-sized bronze sculptural masterpiece, “the Orator” (now in the Museo Nazionale Aracaelogico di Firenze) was found near Tuoro on Lake Trasimeno. But you can’t convince…
We usually spend many a summer weekend at the Hotel Eden on the shores of Lake Bolsena. No free weekend this year yet – but we did slip in a lunch there…
How not to think of Van Gogh today while looking out over the sunflower fields bordering our Umbria farmhouse? …and of course, thoughts of my artist brother Tom, too, and his sunflower…
In the rural cuisine of Italy, the family bread, no longer fresh, won’t ever go to the chickens. Bread is sacred and will be used in a variety of tasty dishes. One…
Don’t short-change Assisi: the town needs far more than a day to see all the wonders. If you’re in Assisi in spring, summer or early fall, wander the labyrinthine medieval Assisi backstreets…
“Good things come in threes,” they say. For me, our third year of the early May ten-day “Annesitaly INSIDE Umbria” Celebration affirms the saying. Kris, Sally, Jerry and Carol, mille grazie to…
Hot summer days bring “panzanella time” to central Italy. This rural dish of la cucina povera (literally “cooking of the poor man,” ie humble cuisine), la panzanella (bread salad) is a perfect…
Linda and Ken left us this note after their June 2017 stay in our Casa Nuova country apartment: “Thanks to a mutual friend, we were able to meet you – what a gift!…
A highpoint of springtime in Umbria – indeed, of all of central Italy – is Assisi’s stunning early May medieval festival, Calendimaggio, welcoming the arrival of spring in four days of glorious…










