Italy

It’s been a hard struggle for Venice to cling to any sense of authenticity amid the throngs of tourists. Every year, more and more tourists come. Every year, fewer and fewer Venetians can afford to live there year-round. The quiet markets in back alleyways serving locals are gone. The fish market at the Rialto...
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“It’s a very positive idea. To eat where you live.” A journey in the Veneto takes us from farm to table.
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The heat we were warned of in Venice had yet to take hold. The crowds we were warned of weren’t here in Murano. Occassional vaporetto loads of tourists showed up and departed, but the throngs of Venetian alleyways were pleasantly missing. Murano was a quiet island lined mostly with glass shops, some selling simple...
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The first thing a visitor notices about Venice is, there’s a lot of water. Everywhere. The second thing is, there are no roads. Anywhere. Venice veterans may dismiss this as obvious. People who have never been to Venice may, too. As much as I thought I was prepared for it, though, when I walked...
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Capitalism has certainly won in Milan, and fashionably so. As we strolled through the Galleria, we found ourselves surrounded by Prada, Gucci, Massimo Dutti, and others labels my tragically fashion-unconscious self had never heard of, but names that had put Milan at the center of the couture map. There was McDonald’s. It would have...
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The old Red Cross hospital sits amid Milan’s busy center, a district of fashionable shops and banks, the two hearts of modern Milan, where motor scooters and yellow trolleys wrestle their way through streets crowded with businessmen and women jabbering on cell phones and shoppers toting bags and oversized purses. When Hemingway was here,...
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