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/
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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.


September 14, 2020

Village-Schooled

September 14, 2020/ Michelle Damiani
Village-Schooled

Our kids are getting an education the likes of which we dared not dream.

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September 14, 2020/ Michelle Damiani/ 12 Comments
Family, blog
language, art, kids, Spello
June 01, 2020

Chasing Open Borders

June 01, 2020/ Michelle Damiani
Chasing Open Borders

The book was going to be about how people open the day through breakfast, around the world. Now? It’s all about finding doors thrown open to welcome our family. So welcome to the working title of my next book.

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June 01, 2020/ Michelle Damiani/ 27 Comments
blog, Around the World, travel
Global Year, citizenship, Italy, kids, pandemic
May 17, 2020

How to Wait

May 17, 2020/ Michelle Damiani
How to Wait

In which Nicolas, at age 14, writes about his misadventures on our Spello stoop.

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May 17, 2020/ Michelle Damiani/ Comment
blog, Family
kids, Il Bel Centro, Spello
April 26, 2020

Crumpling the Map

April 26, 2020/ Michelle Damiani
Crumpling the Map

Everybody’s favorite pandemic has screwed us again. Here’s how we might emerge with a year intact, if…different.

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April 26, 2020/ Michelle Damiani/ 11 Comments
Family, Around the World, blog, travel
kids, travel, pandemic
April 23, 2019

Hold the telefono

April 23, 2019/ Michelle Damiani
Hold the telefono

I’m having second thoughts.

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April 23, 2019/ Michelle Damiani/ 10 Comments
blog, Around the World, Family
kids, travel, Global Year, Italy
January 26, 2019

What's bigger than a bucket?

January 26, 2019/ Michelle Damiani
What's bigger than a bucket?

We’re discussing our possible destination and the list is…huge. How can we whittle them down?

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January 26, 2019/ Michelle Damiani/ Comment
Around the World, blog, Family
travel, kids
  • 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”