Living out the pandemic in Rome has given me time to reflect and re-evaluate my weekly routine. Before automatically reintroducing patterns from BC (before covid), I stopped to ask myself if I really missed them. When the answer was no, I made some changes.
As an American living in the heart of Rome (for almost thirty years now) and involved in teaching and travel consulting, the changes that I’ve seen since the start of the year and their impact on me have been enormous. In February I was scouting a program in the southern Italy and heard people on the Naples subway jokingly commenting about the Asian tourists they saw and the disease they …
Italy has been in the headlines and the attention of the world is focused on the European country with the most (though not the first) cases of the Covid-19 virus. We have an excellent public health care system and the medical profession moved quickly to extend Coronavirus testing wherever there was suspicion of outbreaks (one of the reasons for the particularly high numbers of positive results). For a country famed for often …
The countryside around Rome, while not quite as picturesque as Tuscany or Umbria, is rich with fascinating destinations for exploration — and eating. This weekend I drove out to visit my friends Jenny and Umberto in Palestrina and was rewarded with an in-depth tour of one of the most densely layered towns in Lazio: from prehistoric settlements (now lost), alleged Pelasgian roots evidenced by massive walls of opus poligonale, and most importantly the imposing sanctuary of Fortuna, all …