Welcome to my little corner of Italy.
Surrounded as we are by all sorts of diversions for our leisure time, have you ever wondered what served as the source of entertainment for children of the distant past? Or for the young at heart? Imagination and fantasy are not limited to contemporary times, so read on if you’re curious as to how people amused themselves, even before electricity, and check out several historic games and pastimes for children of Southern Italy. Read More
How did my recent Calabria Cultural tour go? Many have asked this question as sometimes I forget to mention the obvious. I put so much work into the preparation and execution of a project, then move on to the next without fanfare. So I apologize if I’ve left you wondering, and I’m proud to say that the fall tour was a great success! On this post, I’ll share a few photo highlights of Calabria and a glimpse of an experience with Karen’s Travel LLC.
What would traveling to Italy post-Covid be like, I thought, as my departure date approached. I was going from stay-at-home to full-out international travel. In my mind, a big hurdle was the trip itself. Traveling to Europe from the west coast of the United States was a long haul without a mask, but with one? Read More
Squillace, Calabria has been around for a long time. The history goes way back – think Ulysses. But for this post, I will focus on more recent epochs and highlight a time-honored artistic tradition with Squillace’s wonderful ceramics.
Sometimes you miss a movie when it first comes out, but when it finally lands on your radar, how delightful it can be! Thus is the case with the Italian film Asino Vola. Released in 2015, Donkey Flies is one of those rare movies that can be enjoyed by the entire family. Read More
Calabrians have an infinite number of sayings and proverbs, and with all the different languages, dialects and neighborhood variations, I cannot begin to scratch the surface of the verbal expressiveness. So here are just a few proverbi calabresi to whet your linguistic whistle. Animals are the common thread. Read More
Welcome to the waterfalls of San Fele, located in the Province of Potenza (PZ) in northwest Basilicata! The sign announcing the cascate begs for a photo with San Fele’s historic center nestled between the mountains in the distance. A lovely woodlands trail leads to numerous waterfalls, natural cascades in the hilly zone surrounding Mount Vulture, Basilicata’s extinct volcano. Read More
The people have spoken. Tropea, Calabria has just been voted the Borgo dei Borghi, the Village of the Villages, in a contest that asked Italians to choose the most beautiful amongst the Borghi più belli d’Italia, or Italy’s most beautiful villages. A difficult choice, to be sure, but Tropea isn’t called la Perla del Mediterraneo for nothing. Let’s have a look at this Pearl of the Mediterranean! Read More
At the end of a copious Italian meal, you will invariably be offered something to drink, a digestivo, such as a liquore, possibly an amaro, or a brandy, perhaps a grappa… These beverages with a rather high alcoholic content aid in digestion, thus the name, digestif. Most have a strong connection with their place of origin, such as the Vecchio Amaro del Capo, the Amaro Lucano, the Amaro Silano and others that I have enjoyed throughout Italy. Here are a few amari (bitters) with names and labels that reflect their ties to Calabria and Basilicata in South Italy. Read More
How many words do you know to describe the land? Language reveals a lot about a people. In Bova, Calabria, the Museo della Lingua Greco-Calabra “Gerhard Rohlfs” takes a closer look at this connection between the calabresi and their land, specifically the community that speaks an ancient Calabrian Greek language in the Aspromonte Mountains, way down south in the toe of Italy. Read More