Ischia. How many people have even heard the name? And how many have visited? Its next door neighbor Capri has captured the imagination of the international jet set. They and their wannabe hangers on jam Capri port, fill its restaurants and make the island a daytripper’s paradise. But Ischia? Poor and undiscovered (or underdiscovered) Ischia is not poor at all. It is the real deal. Continue reading Another Day Another Island
Another Day Another Island
We are here to enjoy the authentic Italian island life. Read more
Ischia. How many people have even heard the name? And how many have visited? Its next door neighbor Capri has captured the ...
After four days in Capri we arrive in Ischia, Capri’s larger but less well known neighbor. There’s plenty of ferry traffic from Capri to Ischia but we have to search a bit to find ferries going the other way. It’s worth it though. We arrive on Ischia Saturday afternoon for a return visit to the Mezzatorre hotel, the luxe hotel we discovered last year and which will be our home for the next week as we begin our week long scuola di vela sailing school on island. 
“You are people that want to learn about other cultures, that enjoy meeting people and getting to know about them and where they come from, who are curious to see more than what you can see from a tour bus.”
“Regrets. I’ve had a few. But then again, to few to mention”
Back in Florence for just a couple of days, the birthplace of our love of Italy. Two days here and one in Bologna before returning home to Umbria to start our two weeklong Cucinapalooza cooking tours. 
We bill our Umbria Food & Wine tours as an opportunity to spend harvest time in Umbria. And these weeks in October are truly the heart of harvest time in this area. Grapes have usually just been picked and are fermenting in tanks in cantinas, tractors and combines move from one plot of land to another at all hours of the day and into the night. And the first olio novello is being pressed in mills in this olive crazy region. 
In yesterday’s post on our Tuscany adventure I included a couple of photos taken in Siena’s Piazza del Campo of a wedding party that had either just said their “I do”s or were about to. It was a memorable image. 
Returning to Italy today, to our home town of Cannara, brought a tear to my eyes. Literally. 
Umbria is famous for many things, among them olive oil. And with the arrival last week of Vicky from Washington, DC and Johnny Madge from Sabina, we were going to see just why. 
After five days of preliminaries, the big day had arrived. Up until today we had butchered pigs, made sausage, tried our hands at pizza dough and pasta, shopped for fresh vegetables and foraged in fields for their wild brethren, we had baked, broiled and boiled, kneaded, preheated and weeded. We had broken bread and baked it too with Danilo, Moreno, Gabriella, Jennifer, Simone, Salvatore, Ernesto and Mauro. Tonight, however, we were on our own. Dinner was ours to imagine, conceive, develop, design and execute. Tonight we were cooking – cooking with gas. And with wood and carbone. Preparing a dinner for the ages. Dinner for 30. 
On a balmy New Years Day a couple of decades ago, a lifetime ago, really, when I was still a lawyer at a large DC firm, I made a snap decision that changed the trajectory of my life. Taking a rare day off I realized how much I really enjoyed time away from the office and discovered a world outside the cubicle where people meander, relax and enjoy one another’s company. On that day I vowed to myself that if my situation had not changed dramatically by the following New Years Day I would have failed miserably. And a year later I found myself setting sail on a new course for my life, a course into uncharted waters but one on which Suzy and I have had the opportunity to experience many excellent adventures.