DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Is the Burj Khalifa really the world’s tallest building or is it a giant middle finger to the rest of the world? Yes, Dubai, I now get it. You’re more opulent, extravagant and glitzier than anyplace else on the planet. You build it because you can. It doesn’t matter that […]
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — I don’t believe time machines will ever exist but I came the closest to experiencing one. I just traveled from one of the oldest cities in the world to one of the newest. Flying six hours from Rome (founded 753 B.C.) to Abu Dhabi (founded 1971), I felt like […]
I’m often asked if I’d ever live anywhere in Italy besides Rome. I know what they’re getting at. If it’s a woman, she read “Under the Tuscan Sun” and thinks life in rural Italy is all Italian poetry and glasses of Chianti in gardens. If it’s a man, they hated Rome’s filth and have a […]
I sipped Prosecco Saturday in the same piazza where Benito Mussolini worked his fascist throng into a froth. I stood in Piazza Venezia, in the shadow of the gargantuan white confectionery monument called Il Vittoriano, in suit and tie, and celebrated the most Italian of Italian traditions. The Italian wedding. No, not mine. It was […]
Living in Rome is like living in a big city with a small town right across the street. Can’t believe you can get a small-town feel from a city of 2.8 million people who drive like they’re escaping a coming earthquake? Just walk down a street. In fact, walk down many of them. Walk down […]
I’ve always told people wanting to party in Rome that this city isn’t a bar town. It’s a restaurant town. However, it is the world’s greatest bar town in one specific genre: wine bars. Called enotecas in Italian, they enjoyed a renaissance in the 1990s and now are my preferred destination on any night out […]
L’AQUILA, Italy — Jamie Abbott learned it’s pretty easy to sell a slice of heaven. Now he wants to sell another. The line has already formed to the right. Remember my March blog on the Englishman who raffled off a house in rural Italy for 50 English pounds (about $65)? Well, he easily sold all […]
SKOPELOS, Greece — Three times a week for the last few years, the little Attikon Open Air Cinema on Skiathos has played “Mamma Mia!” Besides being the worst movie Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan ever made (There’s a reason none of her 21 Oscar nominations were for her singing, and James Bond DOES NOT sing.), […]
SKIATHOS, Greece – We were going to go viral. I was sure of it. This reunion had all the trappings that pull on heartstrings, from Facebook links to the Animal Planet channel. Everyone would weep, including Marina and me. The setup was made for the big screen – well, at least, a little screen – […]
This off season I changed my greeting at my local coffee bar. Every time I walked into Romagnani Caffe across the street from my Rome apartment I greeted the Romanisti coffee jockeys with “FORZA ROMA!” the long-time mantra of every AS Roma fan, meaning “GO ROMA!” They, in turn, greeted me with the simultaneous, seemingly […]
FRASCATI, Italy — Daniele Cernilli remembers when he was a little boy in Rome 50 years ago, back when Italian cinema was booming and so was the economy. His father used to send him to the local osteria, a small, very traditional family run restaurant, to get a big jug of wine. Through most of […]
Sandro Ferri, my old friend at my corner edicola, walked out of his small newsstand to show me something on the ground near his window. It was a small circle of what looked like new concrete. It was once a home — for mice. They used to come up through the hole and head to […]
