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So there’s this cooking experience tucked on the side of a hilly olive grove high above Riomaggiore in Cinque Terre. Once a day, a local Italian couple opens up their hidden stone cottage home and kitchen to a few people, where together you take part in a quintessential Italian past time of preparing a meal from scratch using only local ingredients and fresh herbs from their garden.
At 5:58 pm, I stood outside Cristina’s apartment entrance, just a few minutes walk from historic Piazza Maggiore, and pressed a buzzer to be let in.
For years, one particular food experience I’ve had on my bucket list for Italy is to “cook with someone’s nonna.” You know, a loud and lively kitchen, getting yelled at for adding too much salt or not enough salt, and of course getting a taste of the sauce before it hits the plate and being told that ‘that’s how you make the ragù.’
There are few modern cities in the world that rival Rome as far as culture and history. Despite being a thriving urban capital, I find it mind-blowing that structures like the Pantheon, the Coliseum, and the Roman Forum still exist right in the middle of the city.
Raise your hand if scrolling through your social media feed has you yearning for a beach escape to the crystal clear waters of Italy’s coastline.
Where do I begin? The Hotel Marmolada, summed up, feels like staying with a family friend, if your friend was a millionaire and had a beautiful cabin in the mountains with one of the nicest pools and spa in the Dolomites.
If there’s one thing you must do in the Dolomites, it’s a via ferrata climb on one of the mountains. And while there are so many options, it’s hard to beat a summit of Piccola Cir.
Cinque Torri is a gem of a location in the Dolomites and Cortina’s most famous climbing location. It was also the site one some of the fiercest fighting between the Austrians and Italians during World War I.
For the longest time, I confused the Dolomites with the Annamites in Vietnam. I’ve forgiven myself because, truthfully, outside of Europe and the skiing community, most people didn’t know much about this picturesque mountain range in the Northeastern Alps of Italy –
