places to eat in Rome (an updated list)

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This is an updated version of my original A paper tablecloth guide to dining in Rome written for friends, friends of friends, friends of instagram pals and anyone else who happens to ask 'where should we eat?'. Rome has a veritable wealth…

Artisans & Antiques: PUGLIA trips 2022

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At the heel of the Italian boot, Puglia is a land of wild beauty where the stark rocky coastline seems to fall into the sea; a land of ancient olive groves and carpets of flowers,  where the light dazzles against whitewashed walls and pale…

Day trips from Rome: dipping toes into the Mediterranean at Santa Marinella

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  If a football stadium is a kind of open air temple to human passion; a place where barriers come down and for 90 minutes everyman is united, then beaches too are arenas to the egalitarian gods of sun and sea.  I am Australian,…

roads less travelled and unique places to stay

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May 2018.  It is mid afternoon when we pull into the farm hotel.  A deep calm blankets the property and there is no sign of anyone apart from a French couple that pad across the courtyard toward the pool.  The tractors have been shut down…

when in Rome: tips for travelers

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Since I started writing here back in 2014, I have noticed that readers like information.  So here I am at the start of a new year, and a new decade, with some practical pointers for Rome (and some free opinion). This year I will turn fifty. …

Rome, where to lay your head in the eternal city

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Alice, where should we stay in Rome? This city, like most capitals, is a jungle of where to sleep options, trickier to navigate than Piazza Venezia at rush hour, so I generally try to avoid this question. The accommodation landscape has…

an Italian reading list

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Sometimes I think about my final year history teacher, and how nice it would be to bump into him in a random piazza somewhere in Italy. Russel Staiff was one of those stand out teachers who take their students far beyond the standard textbook.…

Itineraries. Ceramics and the South: a pilgrimage to Grottaglie

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The sun climbs as we leave the soft olive hillsides of the Valle D'Itria, where we are staying, for the red plains of the alto-Salento, and the road cuts through carpets of primitivo vines as it reaches out toward the almost irresistible waters…

itineraries. around the vinyards of alto -Lazio

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The Greeks that settled in southern Italy during the period between the 8th and the 6th century BC called the fertile land with its happy climate Oenotria; land of the trained vines.  They most probably brought with them cuttings to plant,…

itineraries. treasure hunting in the Tuscia

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La Tuscia is the ancient land of the Etruscans that stretches between southern Tuscany, northern Lazio and Umbria; a volcanic landscape of rolling hillsides, vines, olives and towns crumbling from their cliff-top perches.  The Etruscans were…

the paper table cloth guide to dining in Rome

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A writer I do not know personally, but whose writing I very much like for its directness, recently wrote of a Roman trattoria; why can't we have more of this unpretentious shit in Sydney?  She hit the nail on the proverbial head because Roman…

when in Venice

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What is there not to say about Venice?  After meandering a few hours away amongst the tight streets and crooked bridges, following the famous arrows that lead - or to the train station, or to Rialto - it dawned upon me.  The silence.…