Frances Mayes's Journal Travel, Food, Books, People

Italy grinds to a halt in August.  If you’ve not had that leak repaired in July, it won’t be repaired until September.  Everyone is al mare, at the sea, up north in the Dolomites, or visiting relatives back in the old home town.  Festa is the word.  Here in Cortona, we have the Sagra della [...]

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Cortona was hit by an intense hailstorm. Looking out the window, it was easy to imagine that the gods were enjoying an ice ball fight.  With the lashing wind, the hail whizzed by sideways, straight up, down, and on the diagonal.  I stepped back from the window when one hunk the size of a golf [...]

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These days, when you say “How are you?” to someone in Cortona, the answer is usually, “Con questo caldo. . .” and a big shrug.  In other words, “With this heat, what is there to say?”  With the heat appeared the cicadas with their double-time racket in the pine trees. Their yammering accents the beating [...]

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Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye
And that is all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die. . .
Those line from William Butler Yeats never seemed as true as they did last weekend, when Ed and I, with our friend Alberto, attended the grand wine event, Divino [...]

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I almost met Patrick Leigh Fermor a few years ago when I was in Mani for the baptism of a friend’s boy.  He was to have been there, too, but had to cancel.  What a privilege that would have been. He was a grand writer who so loved this world.  I have admired and relished [...]

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