Author: Ann Bauer

The first time it happened, he was sitting in the kitchen behind me. I was at the counter cutting vegetables for dinner when my older son said, "When God talked to me earlier today, before I went to school…" That’s how he spoke as a child. He was only 11, but his diction was formal,…

Southern Italy is full of svelte young women running around in black leather coats and exquisite, sharp-pointed shoes who eat pasta every day. I don’t know how they do it. Yes, I’m referring to the shoes in part: torturous contraptions that look as if they could cause hammer toes within about an hour. But more…

Perhaps I’m the only one who wasn’t paying attention to the complications caused by the European Union. But I’ll admit, I’m surprised. When we booked our trip to Italy — after receving an unexpected bequest from my husband’s mother — the euro (which had been under a dollar not long before) was trading at about…

I spent my 42nd birthday on a motorcycle, riding through the hills of Umbria and stopping for a late lunch in a beautiful little village called Orvieto. It was, from beginning to end, magnificent. Famous mostly for Classico, a distinctive white wine blend, Orvieto is slanted straight up and home to a remarkable cathedral that…

I have learned many things after only two days in Rome. I have learned, for instance, that I, who think of myself as a forthright women — pushy, even — have nothing on the people here who will grab a stranger’s arm and lead her into a restaurant or insist on turning heat on in…

We arrived in Rome yesterday around 2 p.m. This after 18 straight hours of travel, consisting of two hours in the MSP airport (who knew we’d whip through security in 30 seconds?), eight hours on the flight to Amsterdam, four hours in Schipol, and another hour 58 minutes in the air. I don’t sleep on…