Cooking in Tuscany in a one day class at a traditional farmhouse was a long-held dream of mine. Sure, there are scads of cooking classes in Tuscany, in or near Florence, but I wanted to feel a part of a place. To live like a local for a day with my hands deep in flour […]
Europe
Visiting Chartres Cathedral
Visiting Chartres Cathedral was a priority en route to Normandy from Paris. My first glimpse of it, also known as Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, as I hiked up the steep spine of tiny Chartres, was thrilling. When it comes to medieval cathedrals, visiting this one “lit up”—en lumière—is an epic experience. And that […]
Riomaggiore or Bust!
A bit of backstory… Steve and I first met back in 1985 when he was my teaching assistant for a biology class I was taking at UC Santa Barbara. I was a lowly undergrad and he was working on his PhD in molecular biology. (What a catch, huh?) We connected over travel. I’d just returned […]
One Magical Day in the Val d’Orcia
So we woke up to this on our first morning just outside of Pienza in the Val d’Orcia region of southern Tuscany. And it was just a stone’s throw from the stunning Val d’Orcia region. In fact, you can reach it in just two hours from Rome. Buongiorno indeed! We were staying at Tenuta San […]
Touring Normandy Beaches: My American Experience
Interested in touring the Normandy beaches? It’s hard to believe that 73 years have passed since the Allies invaded France on D-Day, June 6, 1944 (the largest naval invasion ever). Operation Overlord, as it was called, turned the tide in the war to eventually liberate Europe from the fierce grip of the Nazis in September […]