Culture

The Life of a Pig Before Prosciutto

3 years ago

by Michael in Cooking, Culinary, Culture, Food, Tours

Tweet I’m a city boy. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, sheltered from certain realities of life. So when I ate that bacon, I never really considered that a pig grew up, got slaughtered, was cut up and shipped to my local supermarket. To me, the bacon was just bacon. It comes from [...]

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The FAMILY feeling of our vacations explained

3 years ago

by Michael in Cooking, Culinary, Culture, Food, Personal, Tours, Travel Tips, Tuscany

TweetOur future guests often ask me what our tours are going to be like, and I try to explain the feeling of ‘family’, and how it is so different than anything else out there. Oddly, it is a difficult thing to explain, especially since our future guests are little more than strangers on a [...]

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Cooking & Touring Tuscany, Umbria & Lazio Italy in 2008, a look back

3 years ago

by Michael in Cooking, Culinary, Culture, Festivals, Food, Lazio, Music, Tours, Travel Tips, Tuscany, Umbria, Wine

Tweet7 months, 17 tours, 56 cooking classes, 144 guests and over 35,000 miles of Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio are behind us. That was the 2008 season for us at Culture Discovery. As with last year, after coming back to the US, I have gone into video mode. Here is the first video I have [...]

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Tuscia in Jazz Festival 2008 – Schedule

4 years ago

by Michael in Culture, Festivals, Lazio, Tours, Travel Tips, Tuscany, Umbria

TweetCultureDiscovery.com is a proud sponsor of this year’s Jazz Festival in Soriano. We hope you will come and see us! We’ll be filming a great deal of the festival this year in High Definition, as well as conducting numerous interviews. This is the preliminary schedule for the 2008 Jazz [...]

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Florida Italophiles Unite!

4 years ago

by Michael in Culinary, Culture, Food, Personal, Wine

Tweet Wow… I’ve been away from Italy now for a total of 3 and a half months. That is the longest stretch in more than 2 years. When I am in the states, I’m not immersed in the wonders of Italian culture, so material for the blog is hard to come by. Anyhow, the other day Paola and I had [...]

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Soriano nel Cimino – Palio delle Contrade

4 years ago

by Michael in Culture, Festivals, Lazio, Sports, Tours, Travel Tips, Umbria

TweetThis year wasn’t my first time seeing the Chestnut Festival, but through the years, I have never made it to the Palio. First things first, What on earth is a ‘Palio’ ? Those who have heard the term generally know of it it in connection with the famous ‘Palio di Siena’, which is a [...]

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The hidden ruins of a 13th century Olive Mill in Italy

4 years ago

by Michael in Culture, Lazio, Personal, Tours, Travel Tips, Umbria

TweetAsk around Soriano about ‘Fosso Mulino’ (River Mill) and you will get mostly blank stares. So it is no surprise that after all of these years I had no idea that it existed. Very few people do. One day I was out with my friend (and our contractor) Andrea D’Alessio. He asked me if I [...]

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The Medieval Swordsmen of Soriano nel Cimino

4 years ago

by Michael in Culture, Festivals, Lazio, Tours, Tuscany

TweetFor those of you that will be coming to Soriano for the Chestnut Festival, I thought I would post a video that shows a few of the highlights. This video is a promotional piece by Soriano nel Cimino’s Medieval Swordsmen. While they perform at many festivals all over the world, being [...]

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The Flag Throwers ( Sbandieratori ) of Soriano nel Cimino

4 years ago

by Michael in Culture, Festivals, Lazio, Music, Tours, Travel Tips, Umbria

TweetThings got quite busy since my last post. We had a wave of guests come to Soriano, and the annual chestnut festival ( Sagra delle Castagne ) began, which really kept me running, camera in hand. The folks in Soriano’s tourism office were kind enough to issue me an all-access press [...]

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The Wine Harvest – Making wine in Italy

4 years ago

by Michael in Cooking, Culinary, Culture, Festivals, Food, Lazio, Tours, Travel Tips, Tuscany, Umbria, Wine

Tweet I remember my mother telling me about her move to Southern California, and how excited she was the first time she picked an orange off a tree and ate it right there. I was thinking, like… ok, big deal… you need to get out more! But then again, she was from New York, and I had [...]

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You can travel to Italy without worrying about the weak Dollar

4 years ago

by Michael in Culture, Tours, Travel Tips

TweetIn the past year, the value of the dollar has fallen 10% against the Euro. That means if the price of something in Europe has not changed, it costs you 10% more if you earn your money in US Dollars. In other words, a hotel rate of E.200 per night a year ago translated into $242, [...]

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Soccer Fanaticism in Italy – Because they cant feed Christians to the lions anymore

4 years ago

by Michael in Culture, Lazio, Let Me Vent, Sports, Things that make me scratch my head

TweetI love Football (Go USC!) & Baseball (Go Dodgers!).. I’m an American after all. But I have never been able to sink my heart into Soccer. So having spent all of these years in Italy, I’ve never been to a serious professional Soccer match. I’ve been to the small ones, but never [...]

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Would you have a second home in Italy?

4 years ago

by Michael in Culture, Travel Tips

TweetIt used to be that when I would come to Italy, for the first few days, people would see me and give me a huge ‘welcome back’. That was then. I would come here once a year in the summer and spend a month to six weeks here. Michael and Paola are here… it must be summer, right? Big [...]

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The 40th Annual Chestnut Festival (Sagra delle Castagne) Schedule – 2007

4 years ago

by Michael in Culture, Festivals, Lazio, Tours

TweetThe 40th Annual Chestnut Festival (Sagra delle Castagne) Schedule – 2007 Every year, during the first two weeks of October, Soriano nel Cimino hosts a festival that surrounds the chestnut harvest. This festival is done on a large scale, and attracts thousands of people from [...]

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The Tuscia in Jazz Festival

4 years ago

by Michael in Culture, Lazio, Music, Travel Tips

TweetFor the first time, Soriano hosted the Tuscia in Jazz Festival. This international festival had been held in nearby Ronciglione for the past five years, but apparently that town had complained about the noise and decided they didn’t want it anymore. The festival promoter, Italo [...]