5+ Authentic Sardinian Foods You Must Try Start with peasant food born of necessity, add produce from volcanic soil, season with a crossroads of cultures, and enrich with island insularity: that describes Sardinian food. Panadas On a recent trip to the South and Southwest of the island, we encountered panadas, a classic of Sardinian home cooking, in a variety of iterations. We found that ... Read Full Article
South Sardinia – Cagliari and Beyond
Celebrating South Sardinia - Cagliari and Beyond Beaches and boulders and blue-green waters are among the attractions in South Sardinia, but these features alone don’t explain why the southern part of the island is experiencing the fastest growth in tourism these days. Sun worshippers and nature lovers thrill to these attributes, but there is more than superficial beauty to be found in ... Read Full Article
Museimpresa – Italy’s Industrial Museums from Ferrari to Campari and Beyond
Museimpresa - Italian Industry Museums Italian museums offer much more than portraits of beatific Madonnas and maleficent Medicis hung along dusty corridors with dim lighting. Italy’s industrial history has created the backdrop for a special category of museum, the Museimpresa, that appeals to visitors interested in food, health, design, society, fashion, transportation, even children’s ... Read Full Article
Tuscan Food – Savoring Livorno’s Seaside Specialties
Tuscan Food - Livorno Part III The Best Dishes and Restaurants in Livorno As a port city, Livorno’s dishes are heavily influenced by the sea, with techniques that are working class rather than refined. They reflect the city’s cosmopolitan yet populist history -- a mélange of Tuscan food as well as Italian and international offerings, with a strong influence from Sephardic Jews who immigrated ... Read Full Article
Port Livorno – A Charming Seaside City
Port Livorno - Part II Unexpected treasures in an undervalued port Ask an Italian about Livorno and the reply may include the words “port city” or “industrial area” – evoking dirty streets, smoke-billowing factories, ugly grey buildings. Read part I of our Livorno mini-series here, and part II here. Go to Port Livorno and you will find an elegant town of 160,000 with wide clean streets ... Read Full Article
Livorno – A Classy Italian City with a Clumsy English Name
Livorno Italy, Part I: Classy Italian city with a clumsy English nameLivorno is a lovely Italian city with an ugly English name – Leghorn (an English-language garbling of the city’s Italian moniker). Who wants to stop and see “Leghorn”? Almost none of the 3.5 million tourists who pass through Livorno every year while boarding ferry boats and cruise ships bound for somewhere else. Their ... Read Full Article
Serravalle Outlet – Shopping and Sipping
Serravalle Outlet near Milan: Don't Just Come for Shopping! Think Serravalle invites visitors to “think (different)” about a small Italian community with big attractions and even bigger ambitions. The Serravalle Outlet is well-known (Europe’s largest) and so is Cortese di Gavi, a world-class wine. Yet it has more to offer its visitors, as long as they are open to exploration and ... Read Full Article
Serravalle – Sightseeing, Sport, Sybaritic Sojourns
Things to Do in Serravalle Shopping at Europe's largest Outlet Mall Think Serravalle invites visitors to “think (different)” about a small Italian community with big attractions and even bigger ambitions. Serravalle Scriva is well-known for its shopping outlet (Europe’s largest) and Cortese di Gavi, a world-class wine. Yet it has more to offer its visitors, as long as they are open to ... Read Full Article
FICO Eataly World – A Foodie Heaven in Bologna
FICO Eataly World- A foodie heaven in Bologna Disneyland for foodies. That’s an accurate description of FICO Eataly World, Italy’s latest and largest food attraction, which opened on November 15, 2017, just outside Bologna, Italy. What is FICO Eataly World? FICO stands for Fabbrica Italiana Contadina (Italian factory farm); the name is a play on words, because fico in Italian means ... Read Full Article
Tuscany Foods: Where “Cooked Water” is a Culinary Wonder
Where “cooked water” is a culinary wonder - Tuscany Foods The Maremma, Italy’s version of the Wild West, includes southern Tuscany and part of Lazio. Its famed cowboys, the butteri, herd cattle here, and the land not used for stock animals is dedicated to farmlands and vineyards. Farmers and cowboys alike have big appetites and the cooking that has developed to satisfy them is likewise hearty ... Read Full Article