It’s Monday in Milano, soon to turn 3:00 pm, the end of the day’s slow start. I’ve been hunkered in the house at the computer, in no rush to go anywhere because there’s been no where to go. Generally, on Monday, places are either closed or don’t open ’til 1:00 or 2:00 or 3:00, give [...]

Saturday morning, 11:30. The church bell just tolled. Birds in the courtyard. A lovely, fresh breeze through the open windows. Sunny and warm. And someone in the neighboring building has been playing scales on a synthesizer keyboard creating the kind of repetitious, monotonous sound that makes me “fuori di testa” – out of my head. [...]

At 10:15 last night, I stepped out the front gate from the public courtyard of my apartment complex and headed north along the canal for a couple-mile walk. I crossed over the small foot bridge near my place, then glanced over and noticed a couple of older women sitting out on their second floor balcony, [...]

As a designer, artist and photographer, I can’t go anywhere without seeing Design, Art and Photography. Nice, France, complies wonderfully by providing a fabulous draw to my eye. The sights are inspiring and stirring. The things that catch my eye are: the signs of former times, contrasts, lush details, old/new, the hand of the maker, classicism/modernism, typographic [...]

They’re not kidding! When they call it The Coast of Blue – Cote d’Azur – it doesn’t begin to describe  the jewel-toned, intensely saturated blue of the shoreline of Nice, France. Beyond-blue waters. Pebbly shores. Picturesque architecture and a richly-visual old-town. There’s much that’s nice in Nice. I could easily go back again. My travel [...]

Imagine making a cheesy pouch out of fresh mozzarella, then filling it with cream and mozzarella strands. That’s “Burrata“. “Burro” means “butter”, so it gives you an idea of the fatty, smooth deliciousness of this cheese! Burrata is a fist-sized, creamy cheese ball, and for those that don’t dare indulge themselves with a whole burrata, [...]

Happy Father’s Day to my own “Pop”, and to the other men that I know that get to say that they are “Dad”. Sunday morning, 10:00 a.m. Father’s Day. The sun is bright in my courtyard and I’m out enjoying a CUP of coffee (not a two-sip Italian shot). Since construction workers have been rebuilding [...]

Fresh figs are in at the Saturday street market just a couple of blocks away, and they share the display with the magenta-splashed Borlotti bean pods! I bought some of both green figs and black, and enough borlottis to make a pot of something. (I also bought some picadilli tomatoes, slender green beans, pickled onions, [...]

Mary was sitting there at her desk when I stepped into the little back room adjoining the chapel at Milano’s Cimitero Monumentale – the Monumental Cemetery. Now 87, she’s given her time for close to 20 years, assisting Padre Francesco with the mass, altar flowers and little details. We spent close to 2 hours chatting [...]

A bunch of friends and I met up for a lecture at 9:15 pm at the Design Library. I walked almost a mile along the canals and side streets to meet them there. Afterwards, we all went out for a bite to eat at 11:00, walking to the restaurant. We each ordered our own pizza [...]

Warmest congratulations to Glenda and Massimo! Congratulazioni! The two were wed on Saturday, June 9, 2012 on the hill of Cimiez, in the city of Nice, France, along the jewel-toned Côte d’Azur of the French Riviera. It was a fairytale wedding with a nuptial mass at the Monastery at Cimiez, during which the bride laid a special bouquet [...]

Journal Entry: Sunday, June 10 – On the train returning home to Milano after a weekend in Nice, France, on the Côte d’Azur. My brain hit “overload” sometime yesterday (Saturday) in the language department. I rode for three and a half hours with Miriam, who I did not know, on Friday, and we spoke Italian all [...]

Having spent the morning walking all over old-town Nice, on the jewel-toned Riviera coast of France, it was time to eat a bite… or maybe a hundred. Miriam and I passed many little cafés with people sitting in front of grand, black buckets of just-steamed mussels. It was an enticing choice that we didn’t resist. [...]

This is real Italian food. They’re not over here just eating pizza and spaghetti. And they’re NOT eating “Fettucine Alfredo”! (If you see it on a menu, it’s only there for the tourists.) The range of Italian food is so vast. It truly does change every hundred kilometers. And most of it is nothing like [...]

Standing in my skinny kitchen, washing the dishes, I heard a couple of women talking. I looked out my kitchen window and its security bars, across the long, common courtyard and saw two women chatting, five floors up, at the corner elbow of the building. This must be the Italian city equivalent of “talking over [...]

Journal Entry – June 1, 2012 “How blessed and full of grace are these days, scented by the jasmine vine along the courtyard rail and set to music by songbirds! The hours are, at last, warm embraces with a freshening breeze, and the time is my own to color. How, and why, I have been [...]

What rain in the night! The raindrops must have been a half inch apart and hurled at the ground with such velocity! And I haven’t heard thunder, or seen lightning like that since living in the midwest 40 years ago. I had my “tapparelle” – shutters – down, but my windows open so the freshening air [...]

I was sitting in my room typing today and heard “snip, snip, snip.” I looked out my window into the little private courtyards to see a woman in her 60s, trimming in her garden which neighbors mine. I said “buongiorno”, and we started politely talking. We exchanged names, and after chatting a little bit, I [...]

When going into a new town, seek out the highest point from which to get the most sweeping overview. This will quite often guide your further exploration. In this case, I was back in Florence – Firenze – and planned to head back up to the top of the Duomo for my second time. It [...]

I saw the Pope today. Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Milano yesterday for an evening greeting to the citizens that welcomed him at the Piazza del Duomo (Milano’s central cathedral). The event had slipped my mind, so I didn’t make it, but heard the huge piazza had been filled with thousands of people. This morning [...]