Paradise of Exiles

11/02/2025

Hey all, last year when I was helping my friend John come up with a title for his book about life in Rome, y'all pitched in with opinions on the options I presented. His book is now published. It's called The Cappuccino Chronicles. If you're interested in expat life in Italy, this is a great read. With his journalist skills, John examines his adopted city in his tenth year in Rome with delightful humor and hard-hitting realism.

Available in paperback or Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Cappuccino-Chronicles-American-Journalists-Decade/dp/B0D774L9GJ/

09/02/2025

Florentines take hot chocolate to another level.

If, like me, you grew up thinking that hot chocolate was Hershey’s Instant or Swiss Miss Instant, a delicious revelation awaits you in Florence.

Here are my recommendations for where to get the best hot chocolate in Florence-- since I know you are all planning to come in winter season when this delectable treat is offered, right?

This is a FREE article on my Substack.

Florentines take hot chocolate to another level.

08/02/2025

This lovely stretch of the Lungarno has been pedestrian since 2020. It’s named for the Acciaiuoli family’s palazzo that used to exist here, but was destroyed in 1944 by the retreating German army when they mined Florence’s bridges as well as a swath of buildings on either side of the Ponte Vecchio.

Since my first days in Florence in the 1980s, until 2020, I’d always seen all of the lungarni utilized by cars. But in 2016 the city presented a project (funded by the Ferragamo hotel chain and some utility companies) to spiff up the Lungarno degli Acciaiuoli and give it the type of paving it once had, and make it pedestrian-only. In 2020 the project was completed.

It’s a very attractive street and fantastic for pedestrians, as you can see in my recent photo. This city is the most pedestrian-oriented city I’ve ever lived in. What places in the world stand out to you as being wonderfully pedestrian?

04/02/2025

My guide to the neighborhood of San Giovanni in Florence is now available. It includes my favorite museums, churches, bars, restaurants, shops, and more. Designed to enhance your time in the beautiful historic center of Florence 🤩

Continuing from my prior article on the neighborhoods of Florence, herein is my guide to the quartiere of San Giovanni.

04/02/2025

Coming up: my article on the best bakeries in Florence, including who makes the best bread. As you probably know, traditional Tuscan bread is as boring as plain tofu. But there are a few places that have upped the bread game here🤩

02/02/2025

You know it’s a tourist-oriented place when they’re serving all these people at the early hour of 6:30pm.

02/02/2025

This sounds like a good move

Now that Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece is moving to another room at The Louvre, other Renaissance masterpieces hanging in the same space by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese may finally get their due.

01/02/2025

I was here today. Who knows where and what this is?

31/01/2025

A line to get in to Buca Mario on a rainy January night. What's the deal with this resturant? Is it amazing, or is it touted by influencers? Both? Neither?

31/01/2025

I am so thrilled to receive this review of my book from
Lisa Montanaro, Author of EVERYTHING WE THOUGHT WAS TRUE.

🌟Loved this memoir, Return to Glow: A Pilgrimage of Transformation in Italy by Chandi Wyant. It’s sort of like Eat Pray Love meets Wild—two fantastic memoirs! It’s about a woman who walks Italy’s historic pilgrimage route, Via Francigena, after going through a difficult divorce and a traumatic illness. She takes the reader along with her, meeting strangers who become guides, helpers, and friends. The reader experiences the pain and loss that she sheds along the trail. Her pilgrimage becomes a journey of healing and self discovery, as well as an ode to her love of Italy and the world.

This book really resonated with me as someone who has been to Italy multiple times, has 100% Italian ancestry, and has been to many of the places that the author features on her walk. But you don’t need to have a particular connection to Italy to love this book. Every one of us has experienced pain, loss, and disappointment. Those are universal. And being witness to someone who goes through that and comes out on the other side is inspiring. You root for Chandi to finish her pilgrimage, one painful step at a time!

Brava, Chandi! 🌟

https://getbook.at/returntoglow

Read it now

30/01/2025

My winter newsletter has dropped. It includes Christmas in Venice, updates on what’s happening in Florence, and commentary on the Italian PM’s particular political situation. And yes, that’s a photo I took. Came out pretty cool huh?

Venice: what it's like at Christmas, the St. Regis, and a restaurant recommendation. Florence: updates on public transportation, an upcoming art exhibit on a beloved Florentine painter, and this season's gluttonous pastry. The latest on Italy's PM, and more.

29/01/2025

I mentioned Caffe Gilli in my post below. When I went there recently I got a green tea and an apple pastry. My budget isn't conducive to sitting in their pretty indoor or outdoor areas but it's perfectly affordable to stand at the bar, which is also attractive and I can watch the bar tenders making interesting drinks and observe the locals and their dogs stopping by for "un caffe". The Maritozzo pastry looked amazing but I am refraining from consuming that much whipped cream right now. 😆

29/01/2025

Right now in all the bakeries and pasticcerie, we are seeing the cake called "Schiacciata alla Fiorentina". It is made and consumed during the Carnival period. Last year the vote for the best one in the city went to Gilli Caffe. I approve of this outcome. I adore Gilli's pastries and the caffe itself.

- La schiacciata alla fiorentina

La Schiacciata alla fiorentina ( Stiacciata in fiorentino), è il classico dolce di Firenze che si mangia solo nel periodo di Carnevale. Molte sono le versioni per prepararla. Originariamente nell'impasto veniva usato lo strutto, derivante dalla macellazione del maiale che avveniva fra dicembre e gennaio (era necessaria la consumazione dei prodotti freschi). Di schiacciate alla fiorentina ne troviamo per tutti i gusti e tutti gli anni, nascono le discussioni sulla schiacciata con relative sondaggi sulle pasticcerie che la fanno più buona e sul primato della ricetta “originale”
Noi ve ne proponiamo una molto casalinga:
250 gr di farina
125 gr di zucchero
2 uova
Una tazzina di olio extravergine di oliva
Il succo di un’arancia e la scorza grattugiata
Un po’ di latte appena tiepido
Una bustina di lievito
Una puntina di bicarbonato
Sb****re le uova con lo zucchero fino ad avere un composto cremoso. Unire la farina setacciata, alternandola con il succo dell’arancia e con l’olio versato a filo. Aggiungere un po’ di latte per portare l’impasto ad una consistenza quasi cremosa (di solito ne basta pochissimo). Aggiungere lievito e bicarbonato setacciati. Imburrare e infarinare una teglia rettangolare non troppo grande e mettere in forno a 180° per circa mezz’ora. La schiacciata sarà pronta quando alla prova dello stecchino questo risulterà completamente asciutto. Lasciare raffreddare e spolverare con zucchero a velo.
E voi come la preparate?

Feel Florence

28/01/2025

Ditta Artigianale, our best coffee shop here in Florence, has opened in Milan.

27/01/2025

Bernini sculpture discovered under layers of paint

For decades, it looked like an unremarkable old statue. But when descendants of the 17th century cardinal Flavio Chigi had thick layers of dark overpainting removed, they realised they owned an extraordinary sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini—considered the single most important sculptor of the Italian Baroque.

Now, this 72cm terracotta model depicting the wild, mythical sea god Triton is on permanent loan to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, bringing audiences ever closer to the hands of the “virtuoso” Bernini.

The museum’s senior curator of sculpture, Frits Scholten, said the piece is an important link to the thought process of Bernini, who was an architect as well as an artist and lived from 1598 to 1680.

“It’s a sculpture that was in an Italian family for a long time, but covered with [paint], presumably because it had been broken,” Scholten says. “So for that reason, they painted it as if it were a patinated bronze sculpture, the figure dark brown, and the shell on which it stands gild. That obscured, to a certain extent, the quality of the sculpture. But after restoration [in 2018], the handwriting, the style of Bernini came to the fore again, and it was absolutely clear that it was a masterpiece.”

Read more: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/01/22/masterpiece-rediscovered-bernini-statue-arrives-rijksmuseum

26/01/2025

🌟”Baby you can drive my car. Yeah I’m gonna be a star”⭐️

Saw this today in Piazza Della Repubblica.