Bonjour mes amis! For no discernible reason except that I love all things French almost as much as I love things Italian, I’ve felt the need for some French subject matter recently. I found this amazing short but excellent video and wanted it to share it with you guys. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Au revoir! à bientôt!

From Americans living in Italy post on Facebook by Anthony Fico ·
Today, April 25, 2025, Italy celebrates the 80th anniversary of the Liberation from Nazi-Fascism.🇮🇹
But every April 25th people forget about those who came from other countries to help: many of them lost their lives.

While it’s inaccurate to state American soldiers solely landed in Italy and lost the most lives in the liberation, they certainly played a significant role. The Allied invasion of Italy involved a large number of U.S. troops, along with British, Canadian, and other Allied forces.

The highest number of foreign soldiers who landed in Italy, who liberated it, and who lost their lives for Italy, is that of American soldiers. It is to them that italians direct their eternal gratitude.🇺🇲
Allied casualties in the Italian Campaign numbered some 350,000. Among these were more than 150,000 U.S. troops (92,000 wounded, more than 60,000 killed or missing); roughly 145,000 troops of the British Commonwealth (nearly 100,000 wounded, 45,000 killed or missing); almost 31,000 Free French (almost 24,000 wounded, 7,000 killed or missing); nearly 11,000 troops of the Polish government in exile (more than 8,000 wounded, roughly 2,500 killed or missing); and more than 1,800 Brazilian troops (1,350 wounded, approximately 450 killed and missing).

A day without reading is a lost day, in my book.

This was a very enjoyable book but definitely has the wrong title. It should properly have been titled How Modern Art Came to America and was fascinating as such. “Picasso’s war” was obviously chosen as better click bait. At any rate, I’m glad I read it. Very well done.

By the author of Quiet, The Power of Introverts (which I loved), it was a shoe-in that I would like this book as well. I liked it a lot. Longing and sorrow are a part of any complete life and Cain writes elegantly about it.

Maya Angelou, a classic must read. Loved this passage from the book: “I wouldn’t miss Mrs. Flowers, for she had given me her secret word which called forth a djinn who was to serve me all of my life: books.”

Whoa, Nellie, I was not expecting this book! Absolutely excellent!

And, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Oh my god. An epic. Superb. Read it! I just finished it last night and it is playing over in my mind and led to some interesting dreams. It spoke to me. It stays with me. I learned from it. This is the kind of book that ruins me for a while, because nothing else quite stacks up. But I would not NOT have read it for the world.

And last I also read Long Island. It was okay, but not in the same league as the ones above. I stayed with it to see what happened, but I wasn’t enlightened or moved as I was with the ones above. Still, it’s a quick, easy, and intelligent read.

Ever since beginning my bridge journey just over 2 years ago in Denver, it’s been my goal to join other aficionados of the game in Italy. It’s a daunting prospect. I’m still learning the game and my Italian isn’t great. I can read it fairly well, can understand it well enough, but speaking is the issue for me. Regardless, I carry on and I’ve found a couple places to play in town., This place is the one that means the most to me, so far. My Italian has got to improve through this! It’s got to!

Happy in Florence! Sono contenta di essere qui!

Funny thing: In English we call “the dummy” the hand that is laid down by the inactive partner in a winning bid. In Italian they call it il morto or “the dead one.” Italians are serious about bridge! Don’t doubt it per uno secondo! The jack is called il jolly. The queen is called la donna. Spades are picche, hearts are of course cuori, diamonds are known as quadri which means 4 sides, and clubs are called I fiori or flowers. Piano piano sto imparando.

Alla prossima!

P.S. Plus there are historic photos of Florence scattered throughout the rooms. Heaven!

Happy Easter, everybody everywhere! My good friend, Cynthia, who has just been through a very trying ordeal and is on the road to recovery, asked me what I’d be up to on Easter and I realized that it was time for a new post about Easter in Italy! Thanks, C., for reminding me and take care of your sweet self!

Easter is a VERY big deal in Italy! Second only to Christmas. It is such a big deal that the Monday after Easter is called Pasquetta (little Easter) and is a national holiday!

Each region and city and town in Italy has its own unique way of celebrating the holiday, the very holy day in the liturgical calendar. Florence stands proudly near the front of this tradition.

I’ve posted in the past on this blog about Easter celebrations in Florence, complete with videos and photos I took on one of the first Easter Sundays I spent in this beloved city. I’ll try to find one of those posts from my archives and link it here. I’m not a great record keeper anymore, though, so if you don’t see a link, well….

So as not to let my readers down, however, I’m adding the description of the event in Florence from this source: https://acaciafirenze.com/en/blog/easter-time-for-a-jump-into-the-tradition/

Easter in Italy is not a short celebration but rather, celebrated over five days starting the Thursday before Easter Sunday and finishing the following Monday.

The first of the celebrations, starting on Holy Thursday, will have churches opening their doors and welcoming followers to visit their altars. If you are walking around on Good Friday or the Saturday before Easter, you may catch a glimpse of one of the many religious processions that parade through the city centers of many towns in Tuscany.

On Easter Sunday, Florence celebrates with the Scoppio del Carro, or the Explosion of the Cart, a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. On the morning the 30-foot-tall antique cart called Brindellone in use for over 500 years moves from the Porta al Prato to the Piazza del Duomo. It is hauled by a team of white oxen festooned with garlands of the first flowers and herbs of spring, the cart is escorted by 150 soldiers, musicians, and people in 15th century dress.

Around 11am, as part of the Easter Mass being celebrated in the Cathedral, the Archbishop of Florence at the altar lights the Colombina, a rocket shaped like a dove which symbolizes the Holy Spirit, and this runs along a cable that has been attached in the meantime to the Brindellone which with luck it will hit, setting off the fireworks mounted on top it. Therein is the Explosion of the Cart you’ve been hearing about! It is a great event to witness, both for visitors as for Florentines, who wait to see the return of the Colombina back to the altar inside the Duomo. According to tradition, if the Colombina returns all the way back to the altar the year will be positive, meaning good crops, no droughts, and the usual things that made up a good year in the past.

During all of these stages, the bells of Giotto’s campanile ring out. The complex fireworks show that follows lasts about 20 minutes.

To really know a country or a city, you have to get in touch with its culinary tradition, don’t you agree?

The Mass is the time to bring the boiled eggs (better if decorated) to the church to receive the holy touch, before to be eaten for example sliced into a simple brodo with tortellini. Chocolate eggs can be brought too, to join the Christian tradition.

The other notable cake is the Colomba, a leavened cake shaped like a dove with candied fruit inside and covered with almonds and icing on top.

Colomba cake, also known as Colomba pasquale, is a traditional Italian Easter cake. It’s a sweet bread, similar to panettone, but with a dove shape and often topped with almonds and pearl sugar. The cake’s shape symbolizes peace and renewal, making it a festive treat for Easter celebrations.

The day after Easter is called Pasquetta and in Italy it’s holiday too. Locals generally do the gita fuori porta – day trip to the beach of Versilia (Viareggio, Lido di Camaiore) or in the Siena countryside, all together around a table for the first outside lunch of the season.

Italians usually enjoy a picnic with family or friends outdoors with typical food of the season such as pecorino cheese, fresh fava beans, olives and red wine. If you want to visit the main museums in Florence on these days, there is no problem as many stay open for both Easter Sunday and announce special openings for Pasquetta (if they are normally closed on Mondays).

Some of the images in this blog are taken from: https://www.visitflorence.com/florence-events/explosion-of-the-cart-easter.html

I asked Katia if her grandmother, Iris Origo, had a particular fondness for the plant iris. She said indeed she did, although she was named for Iris the messenger of the gods. I can only imagine that there were a lot more irises planted on the estate during her lifetime.

The Origos established a restaurant/pub type place to service their community which they called Dopolavoro, or after work. It is a beautiful place just off the main estate that is nowadays open to the public. We enjoyed an excellent pranzo there after our tour and Katia joined us.

One of the things Katia stressed to us is that while her grandparents most certainly established one of the finest private gardens in Italy, their main goal was to lift up the community. When they purchased the estate in the 20s, it was a very difficult time for the local people. There had been droughts, Mussolini was in power, and while he stressed agriculture and “the people”, the less fortunate rural people were struggling. The Origos established schools for the young, medical clinics for the community, and countless other programs to serve the community. This was their primary goal and they were very successful.

What a grand day! Highly recommend a visit. This was my 3rd. I’ve now seen the gardens in early spring as well as high summer and fall. Very lucky indeed!

Alla prossima!

There are many components to the grand scheme of the gardens at La Foce. They were composed by Cecil Pinsent as partly French formal gardens, partly English border and bed style, and part staying close to the original wildness of the site.

I’ll leave it to you, my sophisticated reader, to distinguish from the photos which part you are looking at.

All the parts are marvelous in their own way.

Did you see the dandelion in the picture above? Not even La Foce is perfect! But, it’s close!

In the next few photos you can tell we are walking through a tunnel covered by a wooden arbor that has wisteria growing over it. You can see the wisteria buds. But the thing you really want to notice is the iconic zig-zag road that is on the opposite side of the valley below, where the cypress trees follow along. What a view!

You cannot beat the vista!

Then, looking in the opposite direction, we encounter the wilder, more English garden. Pinsent left the hillside as he found it, and planted it with fruit trees and an occasional bulb. In the foreground is the true English style garden with beds with curbs, planted with peonies and roses and a few bulbs.

There’s more to come in Part 3. See you later! Alla prossima!

Midway between Florence and Rome lies a large estate named La Foce (the mouth of rivers). If you know Tuscany, it sits close to the towns of Montepulicano, Chiusi, and Chianciano Terme in the Southern Tuscan region of Val d’Orcia.

It may lie in Tuscany, but I swear it’s a piece of heaven!

La Foce lies on the Via Francigena, the ancient road and pilgrim route running all the way from France to Rome. It has been inhabited continuously for many centuries. The Villa was built in the late 15th century as a hospice for pilgrims and merchants traveling on the Via Francigena.  It is located near an Etruscan settlement, and a burial-place from the 7th century BC to the 2nd century AD has been excavated there.

Last week I joined an excellent group of Italophiles on a day trip from Florence to this heavenly locale, and we had the great fortune of having as our guide the granddaughter of the founders.

In 1924, writer Iris Origo, granddaughter of William Bayard Cutting and Hamilton Cuffe, the 5th Earl of Desart, joined Antonio Origo, son of Marchese Clemente Origo, in buying what was by then a very dilapidated estate. They moved there after their marriage. The late 15th-century villa was restored by the Origos in the 1920s with government financial assistance. The fine gardens were designed by the English architect Cecil Pinsent: “the last great Italian garden by Pinsent” in the words of horticulturist television presenter Monty Don. Pinsent had created several other gardens in Tuscany, including those at Villa Le Balze and Villa I Tatti, where Iris’s mother was a frequent guest of Bernard Berenson. Berenson had commissioned Pinsent’s first Italian garden about twenty years earlier.

Antonio and Iris Origo with daughter Donata at La Foce, 1943

Below is a picture of the original villa and our guide, Katia Lysy, the granddaughter of Iris and Antonio Origo. Ms. Lysy has just published a beautiful book on La Foce and it was a true pleasure to hear her take on the estate and her grandparents. What a lucky woman she is!

It was a splendid early spring day and I can speak for everyone there that we were enchanted.

Below: the Origo coat of arms.

I’m not going to walk you through the gardens because if you are interested, you can read all about it online. But I am going to share some of the shots I took of this amazing place.

Unfortunately, our visit was not timed for the bloom of the wisteria that makes such a statement on the arbor which you can see in the photos above and below. If you look closely and use your powers of perception, you can just make out a lavender haze running along the flat surface of the arbor that exists just above the first floor and below the second.

Can you imagine this exterior wall when the attached vines of wisteria are in bloom?!!

Yes, we are in monumental garden territory here.

I have more great pictures to share with you, check back soon. Alla prossima!

If you have the great fortune of living in Florence and you are not oblivious to your surroundings, you can learn something new every single day. I try to keep my eyes wide open.

On a favorite walk along the Arno River as I walk east of the city, I encountered this sign post in one section of the pretty gardens that align the walkway.

I must admit, I knew nothing about who the Victims of Via Fani were.

So, of course I looked it up.

The Via Fani ambush (or Via Fani massacre) was a terrorist attack carried out by militants of the Red Brigades on the morning of March 16, 1978 in Via Mario Fani in Rome to kidnap Aldo Moro, President of the National Council of the Christian Democrats, killing all the members of his escort. The kidnapping lasted 55 days and ended with the discovery of Moro’s body in the trunk of a red Renault 4 in Via Michelangelo Caetani.

The precise modalities of the ambush (codenamed within the Red Brigades operation “Fritz”), the operational details, the circumstances before and after the attack, the responsibilities, the members of the terrorist fire group, the possible presence of other components external to the Red Brigades or of external connivance and aid, are all aspects of the affair bitterly debated in court, parliament and in the press.

Lessons from the past and memories. It’s all here. Live and learn.

You knew I made it to the wisteria tunnel, didn’t you? Certo!

It just goes to show you that the Bardini is slightly higher than the city of Florence, and less warm, so the wisteria that is blooming all over the city right now has yet to catch up way up here! I was honestly surprised to find that.

But, take heart, the best is yet to come in a week or 2.

Still, I was rewarded 10x over for my trouble. Look at this view!

Passing from the tunnel to the next parterre, vistas galore!

These two guardians of the city stand watch through thick and thin, through winter and summer. Hello old friends!

And you knew, didn’t you, that if there were camellias in bloom, I would find them? They are like a magnet to me. Never prettier than when located in front of the medieval walls of Florence.

And an even better view of il duomo from above the tunnel.

Below, I was surprised to see olives still on a few ancient trees away up here.

Florence. Can it take a bad picture? Not to my mind.