The Essence of Slow Travel: Two nights and a day on Italy's Ancient Pilgrimage Route Immerse yourself in the peace of quintessential Tuscan landscapes When I walked the Via Francigena, I found the route from Gambassi Terme to San Gimignano to be one of the prettiest, and I am excited to offer a two-night excursion centered around this stretch of the route. Since
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Memoirs about Italy (And the marketing phenomenon of the word Tuscan)
The word Tuscan has became so overly marketed in the US that a friend of mine said, "When I hear the word Tuscan, I think bull shit." Behind every "Tuscan cheese stick" in middle America, is the marketing phenomenon of Frances Mayes' books on Tuscany. After seven years of success with her first books, Drexel Heritage introduced a "Frances Mayes at Home in Tuscany"
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Special Places on the Via Francigena
The Via Francigena (fran-CHEE-jee-nah) is a pilgrimage route from the Middle Ages that starts in England and crosses France and Switzerland before entering Italy at the Gran San Bernardo Pass. Less known than the Spanish pilgrimage route, the Via Francigena was revived in the 1990s and is becoming more traversed each year. In the first week of my trek on the Via
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Italy’s Pilgrimage Route: How to Plan (part 2)
Packing lessons learned from walking the Via Francigena When I packed for my 40 day solo walk on Italy's pilgrimage route, I thought my pack could be a fifth of my body weight. Wrong. I had to eliminate 6 pounds from it to get it down to 13 pounds— a tenth of my body weight. So if you weigh 130 pounds, your pack shouldn’t be more than 13 pounds (in Kilos, a person weighing
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