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Enjoying Italy when you can't be there. . .

© Sonia Michaels

Well, it looks like I'm not going to get another trip to Italy this spring. Too bad--I was really hoping to take one of Faith Heller Willinger's "Market to Table" classes in Florence soon, after reading about them in the January issue of "Gourmet" magazine! Still, though I may have been defeated by conflicting schedules and family finances, I have already started planning my next trip--I've also found a few good ways to bring a little bit of Italy into my own home.

If I get up early enough (or stay up late enough) to account for the time difference, I can often get my "Italy fix" by visiting some of the country's many webcams. There's a good searchable index of Italian webcams at http://www.italywebcam.net/search.asp -- my favorite, though, is Florence's Cupola Live cam on top of the Duomo. Yesterday, I caught an amazing view of Florence that was taken just after sunrise. I've also been having fun with Rome's Fori Imperiali cam, which actually allows visitors to control the camera. It's great fun to watch people walking through the streets of Rome, and to be in control of a little piece of technology that is so very far away!

Then, of course, there's food. There's always food. I recently discovered the Italian Cooking and Living site -- -- which offers a broad range of recipes and other information, including a whole section on olive oil. This site is affiliated with The Magazine of La Cucina Italiana and the new Italian Cooking and Living magazine.

In the hopes that I can develop my Italian language skills before my next trip, I've been spending time at Cyberitalian.com; I've also signed up for the very useful "Italian Word of the Day" email updates at Transparent Language. This company produces excellent Italian language courses on CD-ROM. First, though, I took the Italian language test at the Scuola Leonardo da Vinci's web site. I won't tell you how I did on the test--let's just say that I still need to work on it.

Rather than practicing my language skills, though, I've been reading. I've found a couple of great children's picture books about Italy, one of which I'll review next month; I've also just read a wonderful novel--"The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi" by Jacqueline Park. This is the story of a Jewish woman in Renaissance Italy, and it's definitely worth reading.

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