How nice to listen to all your voices. I felt like we were in a Decameron novel, telling stories around the fire. Well, and eating all different sort of fried food, as I can see from the majority of vignettes portrayed here!
Giulia, you had such a great idea to put all of us together and talking about Italy at a slow winter pace.
Dear Giulia, Jessica, Domenica, Flavia, Enrica, Laura, and Sinù, I had tears of happiness in my eyes - and often l'acquolina in bocca - listening to your bewitching vignettes of low season! If you come to Lago di Como in any season, please don't hesitate to ask me for tips on the baite. Hiking the mountains above the lake with a destination of food is one of my greatest joys! Grazie Giulia for involving me in this beautiful project. x
Thanks for including my vignette about winter in Rome! I love reading and hearing the rest of these vignettes—I often travel around Italy in the winter, but never think to go to the coast or the lakes. Now I might just need to visit Liguria and Lake Como in the winter. Pizzocheri and polenta uncia in a cozy baita sounds so nice!
So wonderful to hear all of your voices and to be transported into these winter vignettes. The imagery, the flavors, the slow pace of the off-season... it all feels so real and magical at the same time. Grateful to be part of this!
Bellissimo Giulia! This newsletter is indeed an Ode to winter, and the vignettes with all our voices giving small pieces of our winter magics are really a piece of art! So happy to have been part of this wonderful project!
Until this year, because of my husband’s passing, a trip to Italy in January or February was always a favorite of mine and my husband’s. A few days in Rome in 2004 yielded a photo of us sitting outside a small trattoria in Trastevere holding glasses of wine in the sunshine: it became the cover photo for my husband’s phone and iPad from that day forward, a memory of a little escape in the middle of a cold NY winter. After we bought our fractional ownership outside of Mensano in 2009, our winter week became “our week” as no friends ever wanted to visit Tuscany that far into the off-season. We would find a couple of new little towns to explore, trying their local restaurant where very frequently we were the only patrons. This was the week to try new restaurants in Colle Val d’Elsa, adding at least one of them to “the rota” for the dinner visits during the rest of the year. After lunch we would go home and take a nap, secure in the knowledge that we were not missing out by not being outside. Or I could sit on the sofa doing needlepoint, or work on a jigsaw puzzle. Perhaps a little Campari before dinner, warming up before heading outside to drive to dinner. After dinner and back home, some Averna as a digestif and/or another glass of red wine. I am not sure if I will be restarting this routine next year as going by myself might be too difficult. Or perhaps I will be ready for that time alone, remembering and embracing what was.
What a perfect email to wake up to today. It's snowing here at my home in Buffalo. Our beloved Buffalo Bills are not in the Super Bowl, but our spectacular QB Josh Allen won his first MVP on Thursday and it helps soften the sting of not making it to the big game and our long winter season.
But, to be honest, there are so many dark clouds hanging over life because of where the country is headed politically. You know what that is, so there is no need to cry about it here, but it affects how I feel waking up each day. To receive your Italy in the Low Season email has given me the distraction I desperately needed.
I am a chef. I received my culinary degree in Florence back in 1998. I arrived in Rome on September 1, 1997 and took the train to Florence and then a cab to Fiesole where I stayed my first few nights. Needless to say, it changed me forever. I was 34 years old at that time and had never been out of the U.S. other than some trips to Toronto and Niagara-on-the Lake. I knew I needed an entire change to my life - not just a degree - and I made the decision that it had to be something big. I was becoming more and more involved with cooking from home and was obsessed with learning more about authentic Italian food. (My hero at that time was a woman named Biba Caggiano, who had a show on TLC, a restaurant in Sacramento and was from Bologna). At the time, I was working at a television station in the graphics department and was bored out of my mind. The decision was made in early spring of 1996 and I saved, researched and found my culinary academy in Florence and then left in the late summer of 1997.
Best decision ever for all the obvious reasons. But your newsletter this week is about the low season and that's what I really wanted to write to you about. Italy in the winter has so many treasured memories that I find myself going back in my head almost daily. I texted a dear friend on Thursday to tell her I was having a mild anxiety attack because I miss it so much. It takes almost nothing for me to close my eyes and be back - walking the streets of Florence (and then years later a teeny town in Tuscany called Le Corti) with minimal tourists and a perfect chill in the air. The sexy gray skies that give Italy a much more storied feel than the scorching summer months do. What being in Italy in winter means to me is that it feels like I'm home. I'm not a visitor anymore. I am shopping and cooking just like the Italians are doing. Staying home, watching a movie, putting together various crostini, antipasti and charcuterie, going to bed and doing it all again the next day. Visiting the local shops and talking with the people behind the counter who speak no English at all and yet we understand each other completely. Feeling a deeper sense of community than anything I've ever felt in the U.S.
When I traveled to Italy that first time in 1997 and stayed through 1998, it became fall and then winter rather quickly. It was only really hot the first few weeks weeks and then things quieted down and cooled down. The tourists went away for the most part and I stayed. And it crept into my soul that this was my new home. And so it began - a love of Italy in the winter months. Just being there and living. Living fully. That first winter I was attending classes and making lifelong friends.(What I would give to do that all again!!) I returned several years later with my husband, who had never been to Italy, for some summer trips in 2004 and 2013. But then we went back in April of 2014 for my birthday and it was even more perfect. Again, minimal tourists and feeling like we just belonged.
In 2017, one of the lifelong friends I met during my first time in Florence as a student let me know she was bringing her Italian dad and American mom to the States so she could keep a closer eye on them rather than hopping on planes constantly and coming to Italy. This meant her parents amazing Tuscan home needed to be cared for and watched over and she asked if my husband and I were interested. There was no hesitation. We made the plans, which did not all go as we had hoped - we were denied a residency visa - but we still headed over for 90 days from January to March of 2018. I can't describe in words how being there healed us. Living in a town the size of tiny dot on the map, in a spectacular home with it's winding staircase, views that made me cry almost every morning, driving to Rignano Sull'Arno for groceries, dentist appointments, the hardware store, etc. was everything. Literally - it was everything we had dreamed of and more. I could write a book on just those 3 months, as every single day felt special. We even got snow that year on March 1, which added to all of the magic as only snow can do.
Domenica, I wrote more than I had planned. But the anxiety I'm feeling lately - not being sure how I'll survive the next four years - has me LONGING to be back in Italy. To talk about it, to dream about it. It's on my mind and in my heart constantly. Your newsletter this week triggered that (in a good way!!). I now have a catering business and I can't just pick up and go as I would like. If I could, I would probably leave tomorrow. But what I can do is remember the glory that waits for me when I can go back. And it will be during the winter months again. And I'll plan on
being absorbed, yet again, into the life and world that soothes my soul like no other can.
Thank you for listening. I really didn't share as many of the specific details of my winters in Italy as I was going to. I kind of just wanted to write you because I knew it would help. I'm so thankful for you, your experiences and for transporting me back to the place I love at the drop of a hat. Give me the low season all day every day. Please.
Dear MaryRuth, thank YOU for this lovely message, full of love and memories and longing. I feel the same anxiety as you do. So many of us feel helpless as we watch our country being ransacked and undone by grifters, foreign billionaires, and fascists. This is exactly why I wanted to share Giulia's podcast and post, with all these wonderful, transporting vignettes. Don't give up. Keep living your life and know that there are good people out there who are working to stop what is happening. (Also, call your reps!). xo
I have visited Italy in December. There were days that were cold and dreary, but the majority of the days were sunny and crisp. I traveled to Venice on two occasions - and it was wonderful. I was able to walk up and down the quiet streets of Venice and stood in Piazza San Marco with a handful of people. During that time, I stayed in Florence; took day trips to Sienna - so magnificent; Bologna - good food; Venice - so beautiful; shorter days, colder weather, fewer tourists.
Thanks for this. I am planning a trip to Italy in late March/early April and although its not winter, these are all great suggestions for my trip. Do you have availability in your classes in April?
Great stories and well put together. I’m happy to share this week’s newsletter with you. Now that I’m back in Tuscany and enjoying the winter months. They are just as interesting and the colours are amazing. Enjoy.
Ciao Giulia, yes we are neighbors. Would love to come and see you or maybe have a coffee in Colle or Gracciano. We can exchange our informations as I have lots of people that take my bike tour and ask me for other activities in the area. If you have WhatsApp contact me at +15148870183. Ciao
Thank you for reaching beyond the stereotypes of the Italian aesthetic. My recent trip to Italy included a visit to my ancestral homeland in Abruzzo. Although I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the bigger, more commonly touristed cities, they did not hold a candle to the meaningful experience of walking the medieval cobblestones of Capestrano. I left a piece of my heart there and will be returning for an extended stay in October.
October in Abruzzo is magical--wine and olive harvests taking place. Festivals, food, often mild days with some misty rain. Have a wonderful stay. I'm glad you mentioned Capestrano specificially. I have been meaning to get there.
How nice to listen to all your voices. I felt like we were in a Decameron novel, telling stories around the fire. Well, and eating all different sort of fried food, as I can see from the majority of vignettes portrayed here!
Giulia, you had such a great idea to put all of us together and talking about Italy at a slow winter pace.
Dear Giulia, Jessica, Domenica, Flavia, Enrica, Laura, and Sinù, I had tears of happiness in my eyes - and often l'acquolina in bocca - listening to your bewitching vignettes of low season! If you come to Lago di Como in any season, please don't hesitate to ask me for tips on the baite. Hiking the mountains above the lake with a destination of food is one of my greatest joys! Grazie Giulia for involving me in this beautiful project. x
Thanks for including my vignette about winter in Rome! I love reading and hearing the rest of these vignettes—I often travel around Italy in the winter, but never think to go to the coast or the lakes. Now I might just need to visit Liguria and Lake Como in the winter. Pizzocheri and polenta uncia in a cozy baita sounds so nice!
Grazie Giulia per avermi coinvolta 🖤 che voglia di staccare due mesi e fare un bel tour in giro per l’Italia 🍷
ah davvero! Io soprattutto voglia di venire a trovarti, visto che non conosco per nulla la Sardegna!
Ma davvero? No ma allora organizziamo quanto prima 😍
So wonderful to hear all of your voices and to be transported into these winter vignettes. The imagery, the flavors, the slow pace of the off-season... it all feels so real and magical at the same time. Grateful to be part of this!
Bellissimo Giulia! This newsletter is indeed an Ode to winter, and the vignettes with all our voices giving small pieces of our winter magics are really a piece of art! So happy to have been part of this wonderful project!
Until this year, because of my husband’s passing, a trip to Italy in January or February was always a favorite of mine and my husband’s. A few days in Rome in 2004 yielded a photo of us sitting outside a small trattoria in Trastevere holding glasses of wine in the sunshine: it became the cover photo for my husband’s phone and iPad from that day forward, a memory of a little escape in the middle of a cold NY winter. After we bought our fractional ownership outside of Mensano in 2009, our winter week became “our week” as no friends ever wanted to visit Tuscany that far into the off-season. We would find a couple of new little towns to explore, trying their local restaurant where very frequently we were the only patrons. This was the week to try new restaurants in Colle Val d’Elsa, adding at least one of them to “the rota” for the dinner visits during the rest of the year. After lunch we would go home and take a nap, secure in the knowledge that we were not missing out by not being outside. Or I could sit on the sofa doing needlepoint, or work on a jigsaw puzzle. Perhaps a little Campari before dinner, warming up before heading outside to drive to dinner. After dinner and back home, some Averna as a digestif and/or another glass of red wine. I am not sure if I will be restarting this routine next year as going by myself might be too difficult. Or perhaps I will be ready for that time alone, remembering and embracing what was.
Hi Domenica,
What a perfect email to wake up to today. It's snowing here at my home in Buffalo. Our beloved Buffalo Bills are not in the Super Bowl, but our spectacular QB Josh Allen won his first MVP on Thursday and it helps soften the sting of not making it to the big game and our long winter season.
But, to be honest, there are so many dark clouds hanging over life because of where the country is headed politically. You know what that is, so there is no need to cry about it here, but it affects how I feel waking up each day. To receive your Italy in the Low Season email has given me the distraction I desperately needed.
I am a chef. I received my culinary degree in Florence back in 1998. I arrived in Rome on September 1, 1997 and took the train to Florence and then a cab to Fiesole where I stayed my first few nights. Needless to say, it changed me forever. I was 34 years old at that time and had never been out of the U.S. other than some trips to Toronto and Niagara-on-the Lake. I knew I needed an entire change to my life - not just a degree - and I made the decision that it had to be something big. I was becoming more and more involved with cooking from home and was obsessed with learning more about authentic Italian food. (My hero at that time was a woman named Biba Caggiano, who had a show on TLC, a restaurant in Sacramento and was from Bologna). At the time, I was working at a television station in the graphics department and was bored out of my mind. The decision was made in early spring of 1996 and I saved, researched and found my culinary academy in Florence and then left in the late summer of 1997.
Best decision ever for all the obvious reasons. But your newsletter this week is about the low season and that's what I really wanted to write to you about. Italy in the winter has so many treasured memories that I find myself going back in my head almost daily. I texted a dear friend on Thursday to tell her I was having a mild anxiety attack because I miss it so much. It takes almost nothing for me to close my eyes and be back - walking the streets of Florence (and then years later a teeny town in Tuscany called Le Corti) with minimal tourists and a perfect chill in the air. The sexy gray skies that give Italy a much more storied feel than the scorching summer months do. What being in Italy in winter means to me is that it feels like I'm home. I'm not a visitor anymore. I am shopping and cooking just like the Italians are doing. Staying home, watching a movie, putting together various crostini, antipasti and charcuterie, going to bed and doing it all again the next day. Visiting the local shops and talking with the people behind the counter who speak no English at all and yet we understand each other completely. Feeling a deeper sense of community than anything I've ever felt in the U.S.
When I traveled to Italy that first time in 1997 and stayed through 1998, it became fall and then winter rather quickly. It was only really hot the first few weeks weeks and then things quieted down and cooled down. The tourists went away for the most part and I stayed. And it crept into my soul that this was my new home. And so it began - a love of Italy in the winter months. Just being there and living. Living fully. That first winter I was attending classes and making lifelong friends.(What I would give to do that all again!!) I returned several years later with my husband, who had never been to Italy, for some summer trips in 2004 and 2013. But then we went back in April of 2014 for my birthday and it was even more perfect. Again, minimal tourists and feeling like we just belonged.
In 2017, one of the lifelong friends I met during my first time in Florence as a student let me know she was bringing her Italian dad and American mom to the States so she could keep a closer eye on them rather than hopping on planes constantly and coming to Italy. This meant her parents amazing Tuscan home needed to be cared for and watched over and she asked if my husband and I were interested. There was no hesitation. We made the plans, which did not all go as we had hoped - we were denied a residency visa - but we still headed over for 90 days from January to March of 2018. I can't describe in words how being there healed us. Living in a town the size of tiny dot on the map, in a spectacular home with it's winding staircase, views that made me cry almost every morning, driving to Rignano Sull'Arno for groceries, dentist appointments, the hardware store, etc. was everything. Literally - it was everything we had dreamed of and more. I could write a book on just those 3 months, as every single day felt special. We even got snow that year on March 1, which added to all of the magic as only snow can do.
Domenica, I wrote more than I had planned. But the anxiety I'm feeling lately - not being sure how I'll survive the next four years - has me LONGING to be back in Italy. To talk about it, to dream about it. It's on my mind and in my heart constantly. Your newsletter this week triggered that (in a good way!!). I now have a catering business and I can't just pick up and go as I would like. If I could, I would probably leave tomorrow. But what I can do is remember the glory that waits for me when I can go back. And it will be during the winter months again. And I'll plan on
being absorbed, yet again, into the life and world that soothes my soul like no other can.
Thank you for listening. I really didn't share as many of the specific details of my winters in Italy as I was going to. I kind of just wanted to write you because I knew it would help. I'm so thankful for you, your experiences and for transporting me back to the place I love at the drop of a hat. Give me the low season all day every day. Please.
Much love and gratitude, MaryRuth Rera
Dear MaryRuth, thank YOU for this lovely message, full of love and memories and longing. I feel the same anxiety as you do. So many of us feel helpless as we watch our country being ransacked and undone by grifters, foreign billionaires, and fascists. This is exactly why I wanted to share Giulia's podcast and post, with all these wonderful, transporting vignettes. Don't give up. Keep living your life and know that there are good people out there who are working to stop what is happening. (Also, call your reps!). xo
Such a lovely read, scented with all our delicious winter-time frittelle.
We are so lucky to live in Italy 🥲
I have visited Italy in December. There were days that were cold and dreary, but the majority of the days were sunny and crisp. I traveled to Venice on two occasions - and it was wonderful. I was able to walk up and down the quiet streets of Venice and stood in Piazza San Marco with a handful of people. During that time, I stayed in Florence; took day trips to Sienna - so magnificent; Bologna - good food; Venice - so beautiful; shorter days, colder weather, fewer tourists.
The Januarys & Februarys I have spent in Rome, Venice & Sicily have been truly magic ✨✨
Thanks for this. I am planning a trip to Italy in late March/early April and although its not winter, these are all great suggestions for my trip. Do you have availability in your classes in April?
I'm so happy it will be useful for your trip! And according to where you'll be traveling, do follow my other colleagues for travel tips!
And yes, we still have plenty of availability in April, I hope to meet you in one of our classes!
Great stories and well put together. I’m happy to share this week’s newsletter with you. Now that I’m back in Tuscany and enjoying the winter months. They are just as interesting and the colours are amazing. Enjoy.
https://substack.com/@tinomasecchia/note/p-156610008?r=475tcl&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
we're neighbors!!
Ciao Giulia, yes we are neighbors. Would love to come and see you or maybe have a coffee in Colle or Gracciano. We can exchange our informations as I have lots of people that take my bike tour and ask me for other activities in the area. If you have WhatsApp contact me at +15148870183. Ciao
This was amazing! I always tell people to visit outside of summer and this made it so magical
Thank you for reaching beyond the stereotypes of the Italian aesthetic. My recent trip to Italy included a visit to my ancestral homeland in Abruzzo. Although I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the bigger, more commonly touristed cities, they did not hold a candle to the meaningful experience of walking the medieval cobblestones of Capestrano. I left a piece of my heart there and will be returning for an extended stay in October.
October in Abruzzo is magical--wine and olive harvests taking place. Festivals, food, often mild days with some misty rain. Have a wonderful stay. I'm glad you mentioned Capestrano specificially. I have been meaning to get there.
What a pleasant read on a snow filled
morning in Toronto!