Today is Sunday and the last day that Campania will be in the orange/red zone!! We officially go YELLOW tomorrow, which means that not only can we travel within our region but also to any other surrounding regions that are also in yellow!!!!! This is HUGE news!! It’s also overwhelming at the same time because I’m not sure where to go or what to first. So I just made lists of things we can do for day trips, rainy days, weekends, afternoon excursions, etc. so when a free day comes we can pick what fits and JUST GO! Before we dive back into our adventures I wanted to share some of the things that have allowed us to bring Italy to us when we couldn’t go out to see Italy.

• WINE, WINE, WINE!! I have ordered from multiple wineries in Italy to bring the taste of different regions to us. I have chosen each winery for a particular reason: Tenute Rubino for their aging reds and Morella Winery who use 75-year-old grape vines, both from Puglia; Gambino Winery located on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily; Il Sorrentino with their Vesuvius and Lacryma Christi wines here in Campania; San Gregorio, serves Prosecco from a sister-run winery in Venice; Tenuta Vitalonga with their unique fossils in the soil of Umbria, and Il Palazzone who make the famous Tuscan Brunello.

• I also participated in two different virtual wine tastings to learn more about wine, it’s pairings, and the region it comes from. My favorite virtual tasting was with Cecelia Sitran, a sommelier from Venice. We tasted four wines and olive oil from Di Giovanna, a winery located in western Sicily. Cecelia had an amazing personality, was very knowledgeable, and gave a fun and informative presentation. The wine itself was fantastic and the olive oil is probably the best I have had so far! It smells strongly of olives and the earth and it’s delicious! Il Gambino is family owned and oriented, 6th generation now, with organic wines that express the best characteristics of Sicily because of their high altitude in the mountains.

• While it doesn’t get enough hype like wine does here in Italy, there are some good local beers that we like to snatch up every once in awhile! It makes “Pizza Fridays” more complete!

• I found a gorgeous green Villani demijohn! The antique demijohns are from Europe and were most often used to store or transport wine. You can also find them encased in wicker.

• Ordered some beautiful Italian leather handbags from Mary’s Shop in Sorrento.

• One of my favorite ceramic artists was at base selling some of her pieces. I swung by to grab a Mother’s Day gift and couldn’t resist these gems for myself!

• I bought my first piece of artwork from Italy. This was handmade by a local Neapolitan artist and is the perfect representation of Napoli. I read somewhere that Luciano DeCrescenzo, a Neapolitan philosopher, once said, “If the Lord wanted to take everyone in Naples to heaven, all He would have to do is pull one line of laundry and the whole city would come with it, because all the buildings in Naples are connected by hanging wash.”

• And of course, continuing to learn the Italian language and our weekend Italian coffee-to-go’s helped us feel a little more connected to our host country while in lockdown 🙂

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