First of all, the streets are too narrow, built in bygone times when people got round on donkeys, and everybody, everybody, is double-parked. Then you have the bicycles. You have the vespe, zooming backwards and forwards and sideways and wtf? A delivery truck clogging up the entire street. Old people, stooped and shuffling. Let’s not […]
Italy
My Backyard
I present to you La Maga Circe at nightfall, drowning in a sea of pinks and purples. This is one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen in my life. This? Is my backyard. This post has been brought to you by Delicious Baby Photo Friday.
Tales of Thanksgiving in Italy
It’s a holiday that doesn’t exist where I am – talk about it to the 10 people I know in town and I get blank eyes, blank faces. I’m used to that by now – four years of expat life and all – but each November I make it happen anyway. I find my guests. […]
Tight Spot
It’s Saturday night and I’ve just left Rico’s sister’s 30th birthday party. Art studio. Bite-sized frittate, panini, focaccie. Frequent champagne top ups; a big pink-and-black polka dotted American-style birthday cake from an American bakery in Rome. I’m wearing a skirt and stilettos, which is dumb, because – something I didn’t know until this evening – […]
La Donna di Mistero
There are the folks who run the pensione across the street, and then there are the folks who work at the restaurants, at the shops on the main drag of the centro. The osteria my new friends run is at the foot of the hill that leads up to the antique city. It’s a […]
Walls and Mortar
I have a friend here whose family was influential, once upon a time. There’s a street at the edge of town that used to be called after them because so many of his ancestors and relatives lived there. There’s a corner in the centro where three of the boutiques bear his family’s name – big […]
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This Is Not Halloween
There’s the navy fringe dress from H&M that I wore to Erma’s wedding last year. There’s the pair of seal brown oxford pumps I bought a million years ago in Japan. There’s a strand of fake pearls, a fluffy white flower pin, and makeup to make me look like Clara Bow. For the first time […]
The Mayor, the Policeman, and the Termosifone
So I’ve applied for my residency here in Terracina. It. Has been. A wild pain in my ass. This, despite being an Italian citizen. This, despite speaking Italian. This, despite making the request with my native Italian mother in tow. Sorry, the man you need to speak to isn’t here today. Oh, well, actually, he […]
Life In These Here Hills
It’s 1 September, the night before I leave for Dublin. I’m having an arrivederci dinner with my upstairs neighbors, Maria and Eugenio – parents of the screaming Giada. Maria says it’s her mission to find me a man. She says this over spaghetti alle vongole, as Giada grabs fistfuls of table and kicks her feet […]