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Click here and bookmark our blog and keep up with our travels near and far. We get behind the scenes, and find little stories to help you take a little trip, even if you're sitting at work or in front of the home computer.
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An Interview with Dario Castagno: The Lighter Side of the Tuscan Moon
If Frances Mayes promises us the Tuscan Sun, Dario Castagno brings us the moon, a little darker and mysterious viewpoint, and more interesting. “Dario”, as completely all of his clients call him, tells us in so many words he was “Chianti before Chianti was even cool”; the first tour guide in the region beginning in 1991.
His first book, Too Much Tuscan Sun, provides an inside-out perspective on American tourists and their foibles, making us squirm a little as we recognize bits of ourselves in his Diet Coke-slugging, Nike-wearing clients. In the end, however, his general tone of affection and a little wonder smoothes our feathers and lets us laugh at ourselves. His second, A Day in Tuscany, takes us home with Dario through a typical day in Chianti hills, with stories from the past inspired and interwoven with the events of the day. For the rest of the story, click here.
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| Picking olives in Tuscany plants you firmly in the boots of those who have worked here for centuries. As sun streams down the Tuscan hills, time dissolves as asynchronous church bells in the valley argue the hour. The work of picking is repetitive and meditative; it tolls the hours as well, and its stillness stills you.
We traveled last fall with a group of “migrant workers” from Dallas and Atlanta and met Carolyn Adair, retired Director of Student Activities at Texas A&M, who has found her true calling here on the Tuscan hillsides growing olives and producing her “Amici” olive oil. Her grove is part of a hillside parcel owned by partner Daniele Raspini, who restored I Camini, the farmhouse where we made our home for the week. I Camini (“the fireplaces”) stands on the side of a terraced hillside and was on its way to crumbling back into the ground when Daniele had the vision to restore it and recreate it as livable space. Now, with its large fireplace in the capacious main room, and second-story deck overlooking the town below, the farmhouse provides a context, brimming with a sense of layers of lives lived and meals shared inside. Click here for the rest of the story.....
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| Italy Through a Golden Eye: A Quick Trip with a Tuscan and Umbrian Focus
Landing in sun-drenched Italy soothes even the most jet-lagged souls. Cruising down the Autostrada and diverting down side roads when the mood strikes is the reward for navigating the Milan airport car rental counter and its maze of airport exits. We started to unwind when the sunburnt sienna and ochre hues of the impossibly beautiful landscape began to unfurl before us: every moment a photo-op, a movie set, but it’s real and just keeps on coming......Click here to read on..
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