In January Claudio and I will celebrate 10 years of marriage. An impossible feat to have imagined in either of our lives. We both swore to ourselves long ago that we would never marry. Our 10 years of marriage have somehow been a struggle to accept ourselves and each o...

Compliments of Miss Blu, our family at KOK Kamp on the first day.

On our last night at the KOK camp the young woman I had nicknamed Miss Blu shyly asked to speak with me. Miss Blu is a tall striking young woman with a giant head of hair braided with blue threads (hence...

The completely packed case

Packing a suitcase. One of my greatest pleasures. Just like going to the grocery store represents cooking and sharing with loved ones present and even in absentia, for me packing a case is the beginning of an adventure. This may have something...

Even at a commercial center near the airport in Rome 🐰 found her carrots & artichokes! If only we could take some 😂. 

Roma!! Beautiful blue skies & a return to our favorite restaurant near the Vatican, Arlù, together with our mentor Floriana our fearless leader on thi...

 Bunny holding her own as we enter the book fair.

In 2006 bunny was born in Istanbul.

In January 2019 bunny debuted in her own book series, the Bunny Chronicles.

In April 2019 she appeared for the first time on shelves at our Turkish publisher Dixi books stand, at the Int...

Bunny rests against a tree while I do Qi gong in the Indro Montanelli Public Gardens near Porta Venezia.

Finding myself in Milan on a glorious spring day, I celebrated my mother and her birthday by exploring Porta Venezia, a part of town I had only been once more than a...

Back cover of the first edition of the Bunny Chronicles, how Bunny was born.

For Nicole Crabtree, this is a dream come true. As an auntie and aspiring author on a mission to express her love of reading and share her own stories with family who live far away, Nicole deci...

Istanbul is my favorite city in the world and given my travel history this is saying something. The magic of the Bosphorus alone is like nowhere else. Venice is beautiful with the canals, the Danube in Budapest, every city with water in it is lovely and Istanbul is the...

Left Cernobbio in winter on the lake; middle Brunate in spring; right window art that called our souls in Como center.

Como is, geographically, my happy place. Thirty minutes by train from our home, I regularly go there for a breath of air. Italian air. Sometimes I only...

Rome by night from the terrace of Barbara’s lovely home, the Palazzo Pozzi center, top left and bottom middle; bottom left Piazza Navona; bottom right, proof Rome is Paradise

Rome. La dolce vita. History, culture, food, art. Every time I go to Rome, I am enchanted. From...