Posts Tagged: Italy

I hadn’t really thought about it before I visited, but Sicily’s remarkable and consequential history should be obvious. Much of the history of Europe is the history of the Mediterranean Sea. As a large island right in the middle of the Mediterranean, Sicily was strategically vital at least from the time of the ancient Greeks through World War II. Some of the island’s oldest signs of human habitation are cave paintings dating to around 8000 B.

After leaving Florence on my journey to Italy in June of 2008, my family and I drove to a small town in Umbria called Lerchi. About a 20 minute drive into the hills above Lerchi is an old farmhouse christened “La Dogana.” Nestled in the hills among the farms and forests of Umbria, La Dogana lies beneath the fortified town of Monte Santa Maria Tiberina. Monte Santa Maria dominates the horizon, its imposing silhouette overlooking the countryside in all directions.

I flew into Florence on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-June. Wrestling with jet lag, I went to bed early the first night after a delicious dinner at an osteria a few blocks north of the Arno River with my family. The next day, we strolled through the city and visited Santa Maria del Fiore, known as Il Duomo. We visited the baptistery outside the cathedral, and then walked into the church itself.

Landlocked in central Europe, Switzerland is an eclectic mix of cultures. In the north, it is predominantly German-speaking, in the west, French. Parts of southeastern Switzerland are indistinguishable from Italy—they speak Italian, eat Italian food, and everything from the architecture to the landscape seems Italian. On my tour of Switzerland in the summer of 2006, I managed to see all three areas. Each had its uniquely unforgettable moments. We flew into Bern.