Yesterday I promised to tell you more about the “Estate di San Martino” in Paroldo (every year in November), but where to begin? There was the wonderful historical diner based on antique local recipes in the only restaurant in town, the old troubadour who entertained us with stories and music, the night walk, a congress […]

A few years ago I started writing blog posts for the most famous Dutch Italy website Ciao Tutti. Saskia, the owner of this site, gets regularly invited by tourist services, municipalities, organizations in Italy. Of course, she cannot accept every invitation, and that is why one day I get the question if I want to

Even under normal circumstances I’m having trouble with life in general, how everything seems to float slowly by, nothing changes, nothing happens, the everydayness, the unbearable lightness of existence. It goes without saying that this forced and imposed period of standstill is not really my thing. I thought groundhog day was a nice movie, but

Now more than ever, people are discovering their own neighborhoods. They are constricted to stay close to home and instead of planning a trip to exotic destinations, they are looking for nearby alternatives. For us this is nothing new. From the moment we moved to our Italian hill 12 years ago we started exploring “our

In these strange times of deadly viruses and lockdowns I look at pictures of a “small” village party last year and wonder when we will be able to party like that again. We live in a very quiet valley where they hold their traditional sagra’s, group walks and religious events, but that’s it. Or at

Piemonte isn’t one of the most well-known regions and those who know it will immediately think of wines like Barolo, Barbaresco, Barbera and the wine hills, that even became Unesco World Heritage in 2014. Strange thing is our choice for Piemonte had absolutely nothing to do with vineyards or wine. When we moved here I

First I have a confession to make. If it comes to choosing my favorite spot on the Ligurian Riviera it’s like asking a mother to tell you which child she loves the most. I’m just not able to. But Varigotti is without any doubt high on my (too) long list. I think it is one

Even if a lot of the locals still consider tourism in this area more as a joke than something to take serious, here and there we begin to see people starting to believe in the possibilities of these unknown valleys on the border of Piemonte and Liguria. Our mayor even convinced several farmers and people

Our region is often compared to the Provence in France, which is not surprising. Both the climate and the landscape are very similar in some places in our region. Meanwhile, another important feature of Provence is slowly but surely conquering Piedmont: the purple lavender fields. But while the whole world goes to the French Provence

When we moved here and started our lavender farm over ten years ago, everyone thought we were crazy. Nobody understood why you would quit a successful career abroad to start a farm in the middle of nowhere. It was even considered suspicious and people wondered from what we had to flee. Fortunately, the last years