Italy has a special place in my heart and it’s never a bad idea to take a trip there. I’ve spent more than a year living in Italy in total, but when I can’t be there, I love to be transported back through books set in Italy.
Read more
Candy-coloured houses set precariously atop the rough, jagged coastline of the Italian Riviera and a Mediterranean backdrop of lapping turquoise. *Sigh*. I can now confirm from personal experience that the Cinque Terre, or ‘five lands’, are literally postcard picture perfect.
Read more
This summer I worked with an eighteen-year-old Etonian. He spoke of ‘bumping into’ David Cameron at chapel, meeting Elton John, as well as hobnobbing with Damian Lewis and Tom Hiddleston at alumna events. He wore the uniform of penguin tailcoats to school every day. Dubbed as one of the best young musicians in the country, he was a cellist. A bloody good cellist. Read more
Remember when I said I was going to spend the summer improving my Italian so that I’d leave bella Italia near-fluent by September? Yeah, that didn’t happen. But I have been working on it, completing my daily tasks on Duolingo, eavesdropping on my students when they think I don’t understand what they’re saying, observing conversations around the dinner table with host families, and collecting new and strange words like the language nerd that I am.
Read more
I set myself three challenges this summer in Italy: to improve my Italian (errr… I’ll myself a generous 5/10 for that one), to see Florence (tick!) and to discover the Holy Grail of Italian cuisine – the ultimate gelato.
Read more
‘Europe should be a dream.’
He was a professor at the University of Padua. He had lived all over the world. He brewed his own prosecco, and it tasted delicious. He was Italian. He had the words ‘Will you marry me?’ tattooed onto his chest. That was how he proposed to his now-fiancé. Read more
What am I doing?
It was a question that had fluttered into my mind on the bus on the way to the airport, then on the plane to Doha, then on the second plane to Milan, upon landing at 6AM Italian time, and finally when I was ripped off at a currency conversion bureau at Milan Malpensa that left me more than a little out of pocket. Grazie mille. Read more
Outside of the UK, I have lived in two places: Hong Kong and Italy. Therefore it sounds a bit biased to claim that the Italians and the Chinese are kindred spirits, because their countries are the only two places I’ve lived in away from home. Read more