Category: Uncategorized

“And this is the Virgin of the Napkin.” My Spanish friends beamed fondly at the painting, hung in its own exquisitely lit niche in Seville’s Museo de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Museum). Sometimes both talking at once, each one jumping in with colorful details, my friends explained that the famous seventeenth century artist Bartolomé Esteban…

As a blogger, I occasionally keep tabs on my posts by glancing at the metrics provided by Google and my website builder. But for a really accurate reading, I’ve learned it pays to tally my spam. Like most people, I started small. Five years ago, the odd post would receive a random comment such as:…

​“So I need to come up with a topic for this week’s post,” I said to Rich, as I pushed open the door to a cerveceria (beer house) on the outskirts of Seville. The usual Sunday lunch crowd was gathering: parents with adult kids and grandchildren, long-married couples, a cluster of single men in the…

​Of all the phrases you don’t want to utter, “Wait, stop, I didn’t get my passport back!” is fairly high on the list. Not quite up there with “OK, I’ll throw myself on the grenade” but well above “The next round’s on me.” The realization that this essential travel document has disappeared is especially unwelcome…

As you can imagine, returning home to Seville after five months on the road we’ve been bombarded with questions, including “Are you nuts?” and “Are you two going to stay put for a while?”  (The answers are “Yes” and “Yes.”) But the two that always come up first are these: How much weight have you…

“I like my gingerbread covered with pâté de foie gras , accompanied by a nice white wine.” As Philippe sighed with pleasure at the memory, I thought: “I will never get this town.” Dijon was the 36th city we’d stayed in during the last five months. Our Mediterranean Comfort Food Tour has taken us through…

“Deliciosa, ” my guests all murmured politely. “Que maravilloso.” But it was pretty obvious they didn’t really think the dinner Rich and I had prepared was delicious or marvelous. In fact, having accepted the smallest possible servings, they mostly just pushed the food around on their plates as if hoping it would somehow contrive to…

​Want a simple, sure-fire way to break the ice with strangers? Try committing a social faux pas! Rich and I proved the effectiveness of this method yet again last Saturday night when we showed up at a dinner in Turin, Italy with a bottle of white wine as a hostess gift. I’d chilled it in…

Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano couldn’t survive in space without a taste of home. One of the many things I loved about living in Cleveland was Little Italy, a neighborhood where you could always find outstanding pasta, veal piccata, and Chianti, often served family style with a side of accordion music. A friend took us down…

​Hosting dinner parties in a foreign country provides abundant opportunities for pitfalls, pratfalls, and faux pas. I often recall with a shudder one particular night, shortly after we moved to Seville, when I passed around a cheese platter only to have my Spanish guests throw back their heads and howl with laughter. I stared at…