Post by Lauren

Oh, Italia. How can I thank you?

Your were the first place I landed when I started traveling seriously as an adult. How you enveloped me with your charms, your perfect chaos, and your mounds of decadent pastas.

I fell in love with your crooked streets, your stonework, your landscapes, where every scene made me want to rush back and start painting…. but I could never quite capture the perfection of Italian life on canvas.

I admired your people….their pace and zeal for life. How they could communicate anything with the waving of their hands. The lingering meals. Their passion for your land and the beautiful goods they could craft out of the soil. Wine. Olive Oil. Porcini. Meats. I wanted to be Italian.

When Eat, Pray, Love was written I read the Eat chapter four times. Having been through a rough period on my own, I understood how your and your beauty could bring healing and inspiration and most importantly, gratitude.

One summer, I couldn’t find anyone to come visit you. So, I traveled by myself to experience more of you….to cook…to paint…to grow and to attempt to learn to smell the roses….or was it wine and olive oil?

That trip, I soaked up your words and upon arriving home, hired an Italian tutor and attempted to learn my first foreign language. I never achieved my end goal of living in in your countryside, despite how much I dreamed.

The dolca vita……how much sweeter my life is with memories of you.

This week, I am grateful to share you with my Mom, my aunt, and a group of special people from Virginia. Also, Gabe joins me for the weekend for his first venture to your soil and so I can’t wait to share you with him too.

P.S. – I still haven’t given up my dream of living in your hills!