This week in Italian: my homework I love collecting Italian language learning books, and I’m very good about blasting through them — lots of exposure, not much mastery. So, in an effort to help review and hopefully retain, I thought that occasionally I would post what I’ve been studying. Ogni giorno Every day, I check…
Author: Stacy Pollard
Prayers & Piazzas: part travel guide, part travel journal, celebrating all things Italy.
Capturing Italy: Sweet Nothingness
Il bel far niente, is the Italian concept of sweet idleness, or the beauty of doing nothing, a phrase which I first discovered, possibly like many of you, during my first reading of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. “The beauty of doing nothing…has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the…
Buenos Aires: Notes from a Beginner
“Here you can go from Paris to Cuba in just a few blocks,” explained Romina, our hip, motorcycle-riding Argentinian tour guide as she escorted us through the leafy but chaotic Buenos Aires streets. While I experienced less of the Cuba side and much more of the Paris side, Buenos Aires and its many delights took…
Tiny Spanish
In coming to Buenos Aires, Argentina for two weeks I broke my first rule of foreign travel: learn just a little bit of the language. I have not devoted as much time as I like to my Italian studies in recent months and truly, in learning some Spanish phrases, I worried that I might lose too…
BookLove: Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner
“No one can give you a language: you have to take it for yourself.” — Gabriel Wyner Gabriel Wyner is clearly brilliant. He is an opera singer who graduated summa cum laude from his university and is fluent in six languages, primarily self-taught. In Fluent Forever, published in 2014 by Harmony Books, he shares his language learning secrets….
Finding Famiglia
As promised in Italian and Me: A History, following is the story of how an American girl, raised in an Italian-American family, found her roots, le sue radici, her treasures, i suoi tesori, in the heel of the Italian boot. Il Retroscena ~ The Backstory Fall 2009. Still very sad from losing my father in April….
Choosing Colour
A Guest Post by Frankie Still  Italophile, Blogger and Co-Founder of Terra Adopt Frankie and her Italian counterpart Giuseppe were among the first bloggers I started following a couple of years ago, when blogging was new to me. I was drawn to their site by their beautiful photos and their mission to explore a lesser…
Capturing Italy: La Primavera!
Apparently I love taking pictures of flowers in Italy (also doors). And while technically, these photos were taken in summer and not spring, I thought they were appropriate for this spring-themed Capturing Italy post. It’s been another long winter in many parts of the world, and, wherever you are, I hope you are starting to feel…
Of Saints and Chocolates
Of Saints… In celebrating Valentine’s Day, I never thought beyond cards, candy, and perhaps some extra hugs for and from my loved ones. It wasn’t until my sweet mother-in-law gave Daughter a children’s book about St. Valentine that I connected the holiday to an actual person. Valentine’s Day, just like Saint Patrick’s Day, is the feast day of Saint Valentine, as designated…
Snapshots from Florence: Palazzo Davanzati
Just down the street from my favorite street market in Florence (Mercato Nuovo) is a lovely, although unassuming, building which I was trying to locate. It seemed to be hiding in plain sight, and I walked past it several times. I suppose after a few luxurious days in Florence, I had grown accustomed to buildings adorned…
Prayers & Piazzas 