This Editor’s Note originally appeared in the February/March 2022 issue of Dream of Italy. Members receive access to nearly 190 back issues—if you’re not a member, join here.
As you’ve just read on the facing page, one of our new features, Dream Day in Italy, is just a snippet of something exciting and authentic to experience in Italy. My friend Valerie Fortney is far braver than I am! She took the Volo dell’Angelo zipline in Basilicata. I had considered experiencing and filming it for Dream of Italy’s Basilicata episode but never got close! Brava Valerie!
If there’s anything I dream of other than Italy, it is the food of Italy. I have eaten some of the best meals of my life in and around Bologna, including the world’s best plate of ragù at Trattoria da Amerigo. You might remember it from the Bologna episode of the TV show, where my friend Alessandro and a feisty nonna dance and cook. I asked Bologna-based travel writer Kevin Raub to let us in on where to eat in his adopted hometown.
If you can’t eat it, why not look at it? Kristine Jannuzzi’s luscious cheese pics got my attention over at her Instagram account @nyccheesechick. I soon learned that she has dual citizenship and a pretty cool dual life between New York and Florence, so I asked her for an interview about making her dream of Italian cheese come true.
Italy is a place of romance, both lighthearted and deeper, and Chandi Wyant writes about Florence’s own version of Romeo and Juliet, Francesco I de’ Medici and Bianca Cappello. I think Chandi is such a fantastic writer; she also wrote the book Return to Glow: A Pilgrimage of Transformation in Italy that we featured in our book club.
I remember my late father always remarking on March 15th, “Beware the ides of March!” In honor, we’re giving you a fun distraction from the state of the world with a word search of Roman emperors on the back cover.
I always welcome your feedback and ideas. Send me an email at kathy@dreamofitaly.com
—Kathy McCabe