I was going to share about our day trip to Siena all in one post, but as I was uploading the photos, I realized the post would be ridiculously long with a million photos!  So, I decided to break it up into a few shorter, more easily-digestable posts.  Our group was going to Siena to shop at the weekly market, tour the city, and meet in the afternoon for tea at the home of one of our Italian hosts and Carolyn’s dear friend. You can find just about anything at the Mercato di La Lizza in Siena, every Wednesday morning – produce, clothing, coats, shoes, bags, crafts…  The thing our group was most excited about, though, was the “Linen Man”.  Orsa, our Italian host, has a direct line to him, so she let him know a group of American women was coming to shop and he should bring a good

The last time I posted about my time in Italy, I shared about my day spent “home” catching up on rest, writing in my journal, exploring, taking pictures, and sketching and painting.  If you missed that post, you can read about that day HERE.  In the early evening, the rest of our creative retreat group returned from a day visiting a local organic farm and making pizza from scratch.  As much as I didn’t want to miss out on that experience, the day I took was the one I needed.  It was refreshing and enriching, and I was excited to continue our curated Tuscany experience with dinner at a castle just down the road from the Podere where we stayed. The Folcieri family, who currently owns the castle, farm, and vineyard, bought it in the mid-1980s, when it was overrun with vines and vegetation, and the castle’s interior was an

After a late night of travel followed by two full days, touring Arezzo and teaching a creative workshop, I was feeling run down and decided to skip the group activity planned for the next day.  It was a tough call, but I wanted time to slow down and soak up our beautiful surroundings.  I didn’t want to feel rushed to go to the next place and do the next thing.  I also wanted time to catch up on my journal and to do some plein air painting. After breakfast, the rest of the group boarded the bus that took them about an hour away to a family-run farm for a pizza-making workshop.  I knew I was missing a special experience and, I was told, an amazing view, but I felt relief that I had a quiet day ahead of me. The podere (a rural Italian estate) was comprised of several

After our day-and-a-half delay in London, we arrived in Florence late at night and sleepily went through customs and connected with the driver who would take us to the Prone to Wander retreat in Sovicelle.  He was a kind gentleman who spoke a little English, so we exchanged the usual pleasantries, then sat quietly for the rest of the drive.  The main excitement of the ride was his driving style.  Mom and I referred to him as Mario Andretti the rest of the week, because he drove that oversized Mercedes van like it was a race car.  He was screeching around corners and passing everyone on the road.  Mom and I sat in the back, wide-eyed, gripping the nearest handle as if it would save us from calamity, hoping we would make it to the retreat in one piece.  I’ll break the suspense.  We did. Not only did we make

The afternoon was fading into the evening as we finished touring the garden of Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, and we decided to walk down the road to visit Chawton House, home of Jane’s brother, Edward.  He inherited the estate, including the house where Jane lived, from the Knight family, who named him their heir.  We knew it would be closed, but it was worth the five-minute walk to see a bit more of Chawton, the house, chapel, and grounds. The Knight family built the house in the 1580s, but there was already a manor house on the estate dating back to 1224.  It is a stunning old home, beautifully situated on a slight rise, so you can really appreciate it as you walk up the gravel drive.  As we made the walk up the house, I thought about how many times Jane and her sister, Cassandra, must’ve made that

After our morning in Minchinhampton and Winchester, we headed over to Chawton, Hampshire, to walk around the village and arrive in time for our scheduled unguided tour of Jane Austen’s House.  This is the home that Jane lived in during the final eight years of her life (aside from the months of illness just before her death, when she lived in Winchester to be closer to her doctor).  It’s also the home where she completed all six of her novels and published four of them.  The other two, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, were published posthumously. The village of Chawton is charming, with its mix of thatched and tiled-roof cottages and shops. The home where Jane lived with her sister, Cassandra, mother, and friend, Marth Lloyd.  The house was a thatched and timber farmhouse when it was first built in the 1500s, and then a coaching inn, before it was bought

With some degree of sadness that it was our last morning in the Cotswolds and our last day together, Julia, my mom, and I packed up our belongings, tidied up the thatched cottage that had been our temporary home, and set off to see more of the English countryside before heading to the airport to catch an early flight the next morning.  We had a bit of business to take care of before we could start the sightseeing.  My camera card was almost full, and I felt paranoid about deleting the photos, even though they were already uploaded to my laptop, before I got home and could back them up properly.  The photos felt like my most valuable souvenirs, and I wasn’t prepared to lose them in case something happened to either my laptop or the memory card while traveling.  So, we stopped into Cirencester, one of the towns we