Europe

March 6, 2020

Coronavirus in Italy: inside Europe’s biggest petri dish

Hello from Quarantine Centrale. Here in Italy we have become Europe’s red-headed, deformed stepchild. We are shunned, ridiculed and home bound. The Coronavirus has turned all 60 million of us into passengers on one giant cruise ship. We’re sitting motionless with no port accepting our wretched, damned souls. I myself am quarantined. Yes, it happened […]

February 14, 2020

Valentine’s Day in Rome: QC Termeroma is the perfect SPAcial gift

FIUMICINO, Italy — I love the parlor game: Who would you like to be at any point in history? Mine’s easy. I would be part of the aristocracy during the Roman Empire. What would your life be like? Let’s see. You go to your private thermal bath and sit in an outdoor Jacuzzi set at […]

January 28, 2020

Derby Day in Rome: a vicious rivalry that can still bring opposites together

(Editor’s note: I was planning on posting this Monday but yesterday was meant for remembering Kobe Bryant and not a relatively meaningless soccer game in Rome.Riposa in pace, Kobe.) It was a terrific idea to celebrate a birthday. Alessandro Castellani, my best Italian friend in Rome and veteran sportswriter, had gathered seven of his male […]

January 23, 2020

“The New Pope” a holy new experience for this film extra as an American cardinal

Eighty cardinals stared at me as I walked alone down the Sistine Chapel. I tried not to think about Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino watching my every step or the two cameras I was told not to look at or I’d be shot on sight. Instead, I walked slowly, deliberately, as if in a trance, hoping […]

December 24, 2019

Christmas in Rome: Lighter on the lights but heavy on the meaning

Christmas has special meaning in the center of Christendom, but even St. Peter's Square is understated.

(Editor’s note. While I’m away for the holidays, I am re-running my blog on Christmas in Rome from four years ago.) I grew up in the capital of the commercial world and now live in the capital of the Catholic world. It is Christmas time, a time when capitalism and religion merge into a big, […]

December 11, 2019

Top 10 Underrated Towns in Italy for 2020: Get off the well-trodden track

Conde Nast came out with its annual Readers Choice list for the world’s best countries and Italy came out ninth. Italy appearing in a top 10 list is like Alabama football, U.S. billionaires and Harvard. Conde Nast called Italy the “evergreen country.” It’s always there. It’s why I’m here. And I’m not leaving. Next month […]

December 5, 2019

World Travel Market a feast for travel junkies

LONDON — One day recently I went from Iran to South Africa, from Senegal to Bhutan. The next day I journeyed from Bolivia to Belarus, from Cyprus to Pakistan. I gazed at beautiful beaches in the Bahamas. I photographed a gorilla in Uganda. I discovered “The best kept secret in India.” And I never left […]

October 23, 2019

My 5 favorite restaurants in Rome: Affordable, accessible, authentic

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 […]

October 17, 2019

An Italian wedding: Like American weddings but with more romance and … do you have a red suit?

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 […]

October 8, 2019

Walk across Rome without traffic: A stroll across a 3,000-year-old city

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 […]

September 19, 2019

My five favorite wine bars in Rome: The perfect Roman-tic evening

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 […]

September 5, 2019

Mamma Mia! Skopelos and Sporades Islands are specks of paradise in the Aegean Sea

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.), […]

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