Michelle Damiani
  • Buy my books
  • Blog
  • Spello Visiting Umbria Travel in Italy Around the World
  • Gabe's Blog Food and Drink Books and Movies Italian Cats and Hidden Madonnas
  • Coaching
  • About
Michelle Damiani
  • Buy my books/
  • Blog/
  • Travel/
    • Spello
    • Visiting Umbria
    • Travel in Italy
    • Around the World
  • What I Love/
    • Gabe's Blog
    • Food and Drink
    • Books and Movies
    • Italian Cats and Hidden Madonnas
  • Coaching/
  • About/
kenny and friends ilb.jpg
Michelle Damiani

writing with Italy at heart

Blog

The journey continues.

Michelle Damiani
  • Buy my books/
  • Blog/
  • Travel/
    • Spello
    • Visiting Umbria
    • Travel in Italy
    • Around the World
  • What I Love/
    • Gabe's Blog
    • Food and Drink
    • Books and Movies
    • Italian Cats and Hidden Madonnas
  • Coaching/
  • About/

Chronicling our return home from a year in Umbria and the preparations for our around-the-world journey.


October 26, 2020

Modernization and Mass Production are not the same thing

October 26, 2020/ Michelle Damiani
Modernization and Mass Production are not the same thing

How I gained a whole new appreciation for olive oil at Frantoio Filippi.

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October 26, 2020/ Michelle Damiani/ 5 Comments
travel, blog
Umbria, food
September 16, 2020

Wild Asparagus and Me

September 16, 2020/ Michelle Damiani
Wild Asparagus and Me

How a single stalk of wild asparagus can be ever so much more than that.

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September 16, 2020/ Michelle Damiani/ 2 Comments
blog
Spello, food, neighbors
July 23, 2018

How to Host a Spritz Party

July 23, 2018/ Michelle Damiani
How to Host a Spritz Party

Aperol is an Italian apéritif that tastes lightly of citrus with bitter undertones. Learn how to turn Aperol into a cocktail that will elevate your afternoons, and how to turn that cocktail into a party.

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July 23, 2018/ Michelle Damiani/ Comment
blog
food, drink, life, party
  • Buy my books/
  • Blog/
  • Travel/
    • Spello
    • Visiting Umbria
    • Travel in Italy
    • Around the World
  • What I Love/
    • Gabe's Blog
    • Food and Drink
    • Books and Movies
    • Italian Cats and Hidden Madonnas
  • Coaching/
  • About/

Michelle Damiani

Website for Michelle Damiani, author of Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center, the funny and heartfelt memoir of an American family living in Spello, as well as Santa Lucia, a page-turner set on the Umbria border. 

Rumors. Romance. And more than a little espresso.

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Traffic jam, Pyrenees style.
Big news, friends — I’m swapping out my original idea for a travel writing tour in Puglia and leaning into something I’m even more excited about: Book Club with a View! Picture this: a week of book discussions under the sun of
I wanted to break out my new European passport for the first time on Italian soil, but maybe it was good and right that first use happened in Paris, my mothers birthplace.
What is it about cats and Italy? Even an American cat in Italy, wondering how to run amok over those terra cotta rooftops.
We weren’t sure if we’d walk out with one, two, or three Italian passports. So imagine our delight when the kids’ renewals and my application were easily processed! Okay, the family wasn’t nearly as delighted as they were the
Thursday was your culmination of 13 school years: One in Italian public school, 7 at Peabody, one of pandemic unschooling in Spello, 4 at CHS, plus courses at UVA, PVCC, and schools I don’t know because you enrolled in on-line classes & inf
Happy anniversary to a man who can build a pizza oven with his own two hands, designs a cover for that pizza oven with an image from the flower carpet our family worked on for Spello’s Infiorata (a peak experience for the five of us), arranges

A trip to Italy is better with language basics! Here’s my recommended course to learn Italian and make your trip fantastico!


Festival participant, speaking about “Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center”

Festival participant, speaking about “Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center”

Featured speaker on panel discussing Romance for “Santa Lucia”

Featured speaker on panel discussing Romance for “Santa Lucia”