Under the Tuscan Sun is well-known as a book and a movie. In our recent poll, readers rated Under the Tuscan Sun, the movie, as one they’d like to hear more about, so we will review both, Under the Tuscan Sun, the book and the movie. Here are our observations: About the Book: 1. The…
This is post number 5 of 6 in a series covering my 5 weeks in Greece, Istanbul and Italy. The other posts are linked at the bottom of this post. Florence has always been one of my favorite stops when in Italy, even before we had an Untour there, even before I started working at…
This is post number 4 of 6 in a series covering my 5 weeks in Greece, Istanbul and Italy. The other posts are linked at the bottom of this post. I was so excited to return to Tuscany. It had been two years since my last visit and this time I was staying on an…
Tell us a little bit about your most recent Untour? When Marilee asked me some questions about our experiences with UnTours, the review of memories turned out to be fun for the most part, funny in some aspects, and always enlightening. A bit of background: we have completed 19 UnTours, with the 20th to be…
Editor’s note about the photo: We thought a perfect complement to Andrea’s essay about getting beyond the stereotypes of a culture was one of Glenn McClure‘s many amazing portraits he takes while on Italian UnTours. See more of Glenn’s photos here at his website, or on this blog. The thoughtfulness he puts into his photographs…
Who goes to Italy to drink beer? Those in the know. Italians have long enjoyed beer with their pizza, but refined and complex micro brews have replaced the old Peroni. Indeed birra artiginale (Italian craft beer) is putting Italy on the world brewing map. Unlike their northern European counterparts, Italian brewers are not bound by…
Vickie Kelber, our Untourist of the week has to be, pound for pound, one of the top contenders for the best photographer/writer we have among our many, many talented Untourists. She does both of them fabulously. We’re all the more lucky, then, that she takes lots of pictures and usually writes a blog that she…
Italian coffee rules. We don’t need to tell you that. We’ve gotten much more sophisticated as a coffee-drinking people ourselves. Surely most of us know our cappuccino from our macchiato well before we set foot on a plane. (We may have even gotten a twenty ounce latte at the drive-thru coffee shop on the way…
A festival at one of UnTours’ home villages, Murlo is one way that you can see the strong bonds of community that are typical in an Italian community; it’s one hallmark of the Italian culture. In an attempt to better understand Italy, today’s culture clue is an overview of some of Italian culture’s more famous…
Photo: “Piazza Santa Croce” © 2008 John Spooner, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Domenico The next time you vacation in Florence, make sure you stay in the Santa Croce section of the city. Here, you’ll not only find our lovely Domenico apartment, you’ll also find some relaxation – if you want to…