Leaving town and coming home

I do feel extremely fortunate to live in such a beautiful place. I have found an appreciation for nature and its rhythms as well as its unpredictability and have come to have a need for greens, blues and life around me. We live outside of Levanto in the middle of the countryside, the sea 3 kilometers from our front door. We have woods above our house and trout streams 20 minutes away. I can forage mushrooms, asparagus, myrtle berries, wild figs, apples, wild grapes, chives, persimmons, pomegranates, and much more by just taking the dogs for a walk. 

 

As much as I love the serenity and splendour of the countryside and the sea, I appreciate it all the more when I leave town and then return. In late fall and winter especially, when the tourists have left and the land is starting to go into hibernation, it’s nice to visit contrasting places.

I love to travel- in fact for that reason I’m a horrible traveller. I get too involved in one spot and then don’t particularly feel like travelling further (case in point, I arrived in Italy 20 years ago). Living in an isolated spot however fuels the necessity for escapes. We are very lucky to live near Pisa which an airport served by a number of low-cost airlines and we therefore have easy and cheap access to many European (and more distant) cities. Levanto also has its own highway exit so northern Italy is easily within reach. The trains are also frequent and relatively economical.

This fall I was able to get to Torino for a wine show, to Palermo for the day of the dead and to Milano for the New Zealand/Italy rugby game.

The best part though of travelling.... is coming home.