Gunshots & Raindrops: Housesitting in Tuscany

January 2016 “As Americans, you should feel at home with the sounds of gunfire” our housesitting host says with that famously-cheeky Scottish wit.  This was during our first walk with Craig and his wife Elly’s energetic Labrador as shots echoed through the woods around us. We had just arrived to a rural patch of northern Tuscany, near … More Gunshots & Raindrops: Housesitting in Tuscany

Castles of Tuscany x 2 – Castello Della Verrucola

As soon as we set our backpacks down in Fivizzano, where we were house-sitting for a month, we began hearing tales of black magic. Apparently, this corner of northern Tuscany in the Lunigiana region is long famed for the inhabitants’ spell-conjuring ways. Superstitions and suspicions run high here and it’s no wonder with such dramatic history. … More Castles of Tuscany x 2 – Castello Della Verrucola

Castles of Tuscany x 2: Castello dell’Aquila

Driving through northern Tuscany’s Lunigiana region feels like drifting through a portal into a medieval fantasy. Ruins of once-glorious fortifications magically appear like apparitions on hilltops above as you wind around switchbacks hugging the river valley. Often referred to as, “the land of a hundred castles,” the region is rich in such fairytale imagery and … More Castles of Tuscany x 2: Castello dell’Aquila

Ebb and Flow on Italy’s Isola del Giglio

Being on the island of Giglio, you find yourself thinking about rocks, maybe more than you have ever thought about rocks in the whole of your existence. Minivan size monoliths prop the gravity-taunting, sea-lurking balconies of the famous Saraceno Hotel. Ancient stone pathways, dating from the days as an important trading base in the Tyrrhenian Sea for the … More Ebb and Flow on Italy’s Isola del Giglio