Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - 8 Off-the-Beaten-Path Italian Experiences You Must Have

Episode Date: April 5, 2019

Yay! I’m so psyched to share this episode with Kathy McCabe, host of the travel TV series Dream of Italy. This season, Kathy interviewed several people, including Francis Ford Coppola, who did something that both Kathy and I have done — return to our ancestral homeland to reconnect with the villages our relatives left behind. Kathy and I talk about our personal experiences with this, and of course, I ask her all about her favorite must-do experiences throughout Italy.    Kathy started her website and newsletter Dream of Italy 16 years ago and has been sharing insider tips with Italy lovers ever since. For links to the must-do experiences we talk about today, head on over to postcardacademy.co    I’m your host, Sarah Mikutel. Ready to travel? Sign up for my newsletter and get your free guide to cheap airfare.    Thank you so much for listening to this show. I know you’re busy and have many listening options, so it means a lot to me that you’re here. You are the best.   This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet? Postcard Academy listeners can get a FREE audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up via audibletrial.com/postcard   This podcast is also brought to you by World Nomads. Need simple and flexible travel insurance? Get a cost estimate from World Nomads using their handy calculator at postcardacademy.co/insurance  Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy. I'm your host, Sarah Mikital, and I am so happy to share today's interview with you. I am talking to Kathy McCabe, host of the travel TV series Dream of Italy. And this season, she interviewed Francis Ford Coppola, and I especially loved that episode, because Francis, I feel like I should be calling him Mr. Coppola, he did something that both Kathy and I have done, we return to our ancestral homeland to reconnect with the small towns that are relatives left behind. And so on this episode, Kathy and I talk about what those experiences were like for us. And of course, I asked Kathy all about her favorite must-do experiences throughout Italy. She started her website and newsletter Dream of Italy 16 years ago,

and she's been sharing insider tips with Italy lovers ever since. For links to the must-do experiences we talk about today, head on over to postcardacademy.co. This podcast is brought to you by Audible. Not a member yet? Postcard Academy listeners can get a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial if you sign up via audible trial.com slash postcard. This podcast is also brought to you by World Nomads.

need a simple and flexible travel insurance, get a cost estimate from world nomads using their handy calculator at postcardacademy.co slash insurance. Now into my conversation with Kathy. Welcome, Kathy. Thank you so much for joining me today. Oh, I'm so excited to be here and I can't wait to talk about my favorite place. So you have made a career out of dreaming of Italy, but I read that when you were a student at Georgetown, France was actually a first love. Oh, gosh. I have to do new props for research because very few people know that. France was my first love. And I, let's see, I took French in high school and I went to Georgetown for international relations and you have to take a language and you have to before you graduate,

be fluent in the language and improve your fluency. So one summer I went on a program in the French Alps and I just fell in love. It was in Lake Ensi and Talwar, which is a little town on the lake, which probably is my favorite place outside of Italy. And then I interned between junior and senior year at the American embassy in Paris. And I did a study of women in French politics. And so I was all gung-ho for France. Senior year, though, I was always really interested in Italy. and I wanted, I was going to take Italian.

This is one of my great regrets in life. I have much bigger ones, trust me. But I was going to take Italian, but it was five days a week. And it wasn't like I was a big partier, but I was like, oh, it's senior year. I don't know if I want to go every day to this class. And I shortly thereafter went to Italy and the love affair, you know, I fell in love with Italy much harder and stronger. I love France, but Italy is really my great love. You know, I can totally relate to so many things in your life based on the TV show that you host, because I had a similar experience with it.

Like, I actually didn't study a language at all at university. And then pretty much like the day I graduated, I was like, oh, that was kind of a waste. And that's how I started to get interested in Italy and Italian. I was like, oh, I want to learn another language. Italian seems easy enough. And so that's kind of how I started getting interested in it. But I would love to hear about your first. trip to Italy? Well, there are actually two. The one that I, there was one where I was traveling with a friend actually, I think it was between junior and senior year of college. And we were in the south of France. And we just went over for the afternoon and evening to Italy, to Santa Margarita Ligure. That was technically my first time on Italian soil. And it was like a movie. I mean, And it was like any, you know, the Italian summer beach experience or even beach town on an evening is so magical and so like old world. And I was, was blown away by just this few hours in Italy.

And then the next summer, my mom and I for my college graduation, we decided that or she decided she was going to take me to Italy. And then we went to Venice, Florence, and Rome, but then the whole point of the trip was to go to my grandparents or my grandfather's ancestral hometown in Casso Vettres, Socolore, and Avalino, which is in Campania, about an hour from Naples. And that trip, which is a long story and later inspired what an episode of the PBS series completely changed my life. Well, I would love to hear more about this story. So this was your great grandparents. Oh, my great grandparents, yes, where they came from. So my mother's father at the time was alive. He was 93. His name was Lewis Nargi. He was he and his wife, who was actually also from a, whose family was from a nearby town. They were born in the U.S., but it was their parents who came over. They were my daycare. care every day of my childhood. My mom was a teacher. My dad worked and I was only child and I went there every day. And I was very, very deeply bonded to them. And my grandfather would talk about his father in this town called Casaveterre and magical things about the town, about the Madonna

and the town, how his dream was to see this town. My grandfather. My grandfather wanted to see this place that his father spoke so highly of. So fast forward. my grandfather's 93 in a nursing home, although he's very sharp. And my mother and I decide we're going to fulfill this dream for him. And we show up in Kosovojealcolore. And it's a magical, incredible day. My mother says it's like Brigadune. It's like the town came alive for once every 100 years.

It had been more than 100 years since a direct member of that family had been back. We discovered lots of things about the family. and then like 36 hours later, my grandfather died. So he didn't know or did he know that we had found the town. From there, I would keep going back to Italy. I'd go to Pasovedre. I fell in love and found some part of myself, I suppose. What do you think that your great-grandparents would think of you returning to their town?

There was very much something pushing to me. make this happen to do this PBS series, to do this PBS series, but to do this specific episode. You know, going back to the town was very, very important, but even then going back again and filming there and telling the story of this Madonna, and I felt their presence very much this, you know, we only just, my mom had stage four cancer and had two months to live and got this amazing drug. And this is about a year and a half later, we're going to film season two. And three weeks before we're supposed to go film this Castle Vetre episode, I was like,

you know, my parents, I don't know why we didn't think of this before or set this up before, but my parents need to go and need to be in this episode. And so they came and it was really a very spiritual experience, not just making a TV show. my mom actually passed away just a few months after the show finally came out. And it very much felt like there was some rhyme or reason for all this. I'm so glad that you had that experience with your mom. Because I know how powerful it is. I actually had a similar experience. So our family comes from Sicily. And I think about my great-grandparents quite a bit. And so we went to Tuesday. which is where our hometown, where like my great-grandparents came from. And it's this mountain village,

you know, above the sea. And you have to wind like way up to get there. And I just am like, how did they ever make it out of here? And then, you know, I think you were there for a procession and we were there for like a special procession at the mid-August holidays. And so we're winding through these stone streets with the Madonna like you guys had. And there's candles lighting our way and music. And my mom is just sobbing because she's thinking of her father who passed away. And yeah, I know what it's like to go back and just to have that feeling of, yes, there's other people with us. There is something to it and there's something incredibly comforting about it. I think Italy brings out crazy things in people like stories of ancestors and stories.

deep, deep, powerful stories from inside ourselves about our families, about relationships, about dreams, about living in a different way, I think. I think you looked into becoming an Italian citizen as well. I did. And we actually only show an abbreviated part of that story. So there are several loopholes. So basically, Italy grant citizenship Uri Sanguinus, which is by blood. So if you are born to a current Italian citizen, you're considered Italian, no matter where in the world that you're born. So my grandfather, who was born in the U.S., his father was still Italian when he was born. But my grandfather's born in 1902, and my great-grandfather are naturalized in 1905,

and there is a random rule that if you naturalized before 1912, you cannot become an Italian citizen. It's just one of their laws. And on the other side, there was another law from my grandmother's side, which I could have qualified on. And it is that if you're doing it on the mother's side and the mother's born before 1948 and my mom was born before 1948, that would rule you out too. So in the show, we show that I cannot become a citizen. But the truth is, and I haven't actually done anything about it yet, you can go to court in Rome to dispute the 1948 rule as just, discriminatory and eventually get citizenship. That is what I plan to do. It was just a much longer story that we didn't have time to tell the whole thing in TV. Oh, that's a very interesting

detail, though, because I know a few people actually who thought they weren't eligible because of that. So that is a great tip, Kathy. Thank you. Yeah, good. I hope it can help someone. And I mean, I should, yeah, I need to get on my paperwork and all that. So your newsletter is packed with like all of these amazing experiences that people can have. And it's Italy. How do you go about researching what goes in there? Are you going over to Italy and trying out all the stuff yourself? I used to write a lot more of it, but the funny thing is, especially with doing the TV show, I just don't have time. So I've always had a group of really great contributors, many of whom live there or travel there frequently. We do smaller pieces on new things. We do roundups.

We do, like we've done two issues on Italy's best tour guides, two issues on Italy's best cooking schools. So some of it's super, super practical, but some of it's a little more story-based. From the beginning, it's been a print publication and an online membership website. So you can get the, we have 10 issues a year. You can get the issues either online or mail to your, you can still get the mail to your home or both. and for 16 years, I've written about everything from cooking schools to villa rentals, Abruzzo to Venice, truffle hunting, painting classes, local tour guides, agritories me. I was writing about experiential travel and all the things that weren't in good guidebooks,

you know, well, before other people. Now it's just taken for granted that you're going to go do a cooking class or you're going to stay in a villa, but all this was newer 16 years ago. when I started this publication. So it's really a wealth of information. We're almost done updating actually all of it. People can join. They can get discounts.

They can get access to some exclusive things like the PBS special. They're going to get access a few months early. And our new podcast that we're developing, they can already hear the first episode. It's really a must for any at tallophile. Your Business Dream of Italy is now a PBS travel show, which I really love. discovered recently that I can actually watch it abroad via your website. And so how many seasons have you done so far? So we've done two seasons. Each season is six half-hour episodes. And we have a special coming up, which will be out the summer of 2019. And that is one episode with Francis

Mays of Under the Tuscan Sun. And it's called Dream of Italy Under the Tuscan Sun. That must have been a really fun interview. Oh, she's fantastic. We've become really good friends. and she's just the loveliest soul. And she's a great representative of making one's dreams come true in extraordinary ways and not doing it when you're 20-something. I think that's been this really interesting theme lately with some of my work and interviews. And it's never sort of too late to make your dream come true, especially when it comes to Italy or travel. Yes. I love interviewing people of like a diverse range of ages.

as well. You've been, you've interviewed so many interesting people, locals and then travelers and Francis Ford Coppola. Oh, he was such a trip. Tell us, tell us what it was like spending the day with him. The way that all came about is I went, he opened a Palazzo, a hotel in his ancestral hometown in southern Italy and Basilicaata. We actually have a similar story. You know, we both went in our 20s. We were born there. And, you know, we were born there. And, we went in our 20s and rediscovered our heritage. So he opened this amazing Palazzo Margarita. I stayed there. I reviewed it. And I wrote him a handwritten note about what this had meant to me. And it was really like his love letter to Italy and the experience of staying there. And I suppose they gave it to him.

And a few years later, when the show came out, someone from the hotel congratulated me. And I said, you know, would he ever want to do an interview? And I think perhaps the connection in my story convinced him to do so. And we arrived in this little town in Basilica, and he has a little cafe in the front where it's called Chinatita. It's in honor of the Hollywood, or sorry, the equivalent of the Hollywood studio outside of Rome. So I'm sitting with my camera guys, and he's just at the next table. sitting with some cousin out on the out on the sidewalk like a normal person and I walked up and I'm like hey I'm interviewing you tomorrow he's like oh hi Kathy and so he we really just were given like an hour with him but it

extended into about three hours I convinced him to do more and his hundred year old uncle was there and his his uncle's like 98 year old wife and the uncle was a composer and the wife was a ballerina and it just was so interesting. Yeah, I loved that episode. I think one of my favorite parts was when he was talking about going back and visiting, like, his, you know, ancestral home for the first time, and he didn't really have a place to stay. And so he just stayed in, like, the same bed as some random cousin. And I can relate, because when my mom and I went to Sicily that first time, you know,

we had made sort of connections through kind of a long last. family through Facebook. And then our plane touches down. And all of a sudden, we're like, what are we doing? We're going to go and stay with this family. We've never met them before. We're staying in their own house. But I wouldn't have done it any other way. And what town is it? What town are you from? It was Tuzza in Sicily. And so they picked us up. They were waiting for us at the airport. We drove two hours from Palermo to get to Tuzza. And that's when it was like going through my mind of, oh my gosh. Gosh, how did my great-grandparents make it out of here before, like, this highway was here?

I know. I had that same feeling. It was a once, you know, if you drove, if you were drove, or drove, if you somehow made it to Naples from where my great-grandparents were, it was maybe a once every few year thing or a once-it-a-lifetime thing. Yeah, and I think both of our ancestors came from sort of like mountain villages. I'm just imagining them, like, riding this donkey down, like, down to, like, I don't, I honestly have no idea. they made it out. And that's why I'm just always so curious what what would our ancestors think if we knew we kept going back to the hometown that they abandoned? I think they would love it. I think they would be grateful. I think there's things that just continue through time.

I think there's healing. Yeah. When you went to Castell Vittere for the first time, do you have like certain images that really stay with you that, you know, when somebody mentions the word, like that's what pops into your mind. The sun, you know, it was so sunny. It was July. A little truck with vegetables went by, and the man yells on the loudspeaker, you know, all the names of the vegetables that he's selling. And it's straight out of an Italian movie.

It was also very, my mom and I are both blondes, were actually my mother's ancestors are Norman, and we're Norman invaders. We were, I don't know what we were thinking. We wore shorts and sneakers. And this is the South and this is the 90s. Still, we were, we stayed in Avellino the night before at this jolly hotel, which is sort of like a holiday. And we were the only women there. It's all businessmen.

And where these two blonde women is sitting in the dining room, we stuck out like a sore thumb. I mean, you couldn't miss it. It was like aliens had landed in the town. I mean, and maybe people like looked, but they, you know, everyone knew. I'm sure you were very popular. But we just showed up. We didn't know anybody. We just showed up.

And we were very adventurous. And thank God we were very adventurous. Yeah. When I think back on Tusa, I just, there was sun dried tomatoes, you know, just baking in the sun on the rooftop. And they had made everything themselves, like the bread on the wine. the cheese even and I definitely felt like, yeah, that I fell off of a movie from the 1970s. I don't know. It was beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm so excited that people are doing this that are they,

that we, you did it, I've done it. It's a really cool thing to go and do if you can. And even if you're just going to the town and there aren't any relatives left or just even the area. It gives a lot of meaning to your travel. So when you are planning your episodes for Dream of Italy, I guess how do you plan out Dream of Italy, the TV show? I like to have a mix. In this last season, it was Florence, Bologna, and Venice. So I think Florence and Venice, obviously,

are big destinations that people know, but we tried to do things that not everybody knows about. So try to see these big, famous places in a new way. Bologna is just an exquisite city that doesn't get enough attention, I think, from international travelers. And then I wanted to do, then that's a mix of cities and countryside. We did a Bruto, Basilicata, and then Caso Vetteri Solcolore, a mix of the north and the south. So some kind of mix of experiences. The world is getting smaller.

Italy is getting smaller. People have been a lot of places. and so to find places people aren't that familiar with is exciting. I'd like to say for next season, a city that I love, love, love, love, love is Torino. Oh, me too. Yeah. So doing, again, Italy is so blessed. If there was no Florence, Rome, Venice, or Melania, people would be going to Torino and Bologna.

I am, I can't believe I haven't made it there, but I'm fascinated by Trieste. and a Fjoli, and that's on my bucket list, hopefully even to just go check out this year and to film there as well. So there's still a lot for even me to discover. It's really, you can't go wrong. Same. I've been there, you know, spent years on and off there. And like, I think the Dolomites is also still on your list.

Oh, yes. It's been on my list forever. I can't believe I still have a lot. gotten there. But I would like to go there soon and then go back to Lece. You've been there as well, right? Yes. Yes. Leche, we did a Puli episode. But I mean, people just, it's a big surprise. It's a baroque city in the middle of the south. It is a surprising place. And that's, that's Italy. It's just full of surprises. So, Kathy, you have had some of the best experiences to be had in Italy. Could we do like a little lightning round of

some of your favorites you've experienced over the years? Sure. I'm just going to list all of my favorite things to get ideas for the next time I'm in Italy. Okay. Best Truffle experience. So for truffle hunting, I love Giorgio and Natale Romagnolo. They're these brothers outside of Alba, which is the truffle capital of Piedmont. And they are the name of their places, La Casa del Trouli.

Preefoulao, and they will take you hunting in the woods and then also do a tasting for you. They're in the Piedmont episode of Dream of Italy. And if you come to Dream of Italy.com, you can also get the information we have downloadable travel guides that go with the episodes. And for truffles, I guess if we're going truffle hunting, we would have to plan that for a certain time of year. Yeah, for the white truffles, which are the ones that are the most impressive. and the most rare and expensive you want to go in the fall. But if you happen to be in Italy during the summer and spring, there's also other truffles, other black truffles.

It's still a fun experience, especially if you have kids. Tell us what one of your favorite cheese making experiences has been. So you can also go about, you know, in Campania, there's 80,000 buffalo that make the milk for the mozzarella. And about a half hour south of Naples, you can go to Vanuolo, a dairy, which keeps the 400 female and I think like a dozen water buffaloes. And you can meet them. And then you can also taste the cheese. So I have been interested in going to a pizza making school for a while.

I haven't done it yet. I know that you have. Could you tell me about your experience? So I actually learned with the master in Naples for the Naples. for the Naples episode of Dreamavilli. And his name is Enzo Kocha. He's known the world over as a master Pizziolo. It was very funny.

It was very Seinfeld-esque. He was quite critical of my technique. But it's really fun. And I mean, people go not just for fun, but they want to open a pizzeria back at home. And I did something similar with Gelato. There's a Gelato University outside of Bologna, and that's in the Bologna episode of Dreamavillov.

Italy, where you can go for like six weeks and really learn every aspect of gelato making and opening a gelato business and people come from all over the world. You can go really in depth with the things that you love in Italy. I think I've had like a different fantasy for every single thing because I thought about going to pizza school, not because I wanted to open a pizzeria just for fun, but I did think about starting like a gelato truck company and going to gelato school. I haven't done it yet, but it's still at the back of my mind. I think it's a brilliant idea. One of my favorite more modern Italian movies is lessons in chocolate with Luca Argentero.

It takes place in Perugia at the Chocolate's factory up there. And I think you went to chocolate school there? I did. And I was actually the one of the first two ever went. I think it was 2004 when they had just a few little classrooms at Perugino where they make the Bacchi. and now it's a full, beautiful school. And you can go and learn how to make the botchy and learn, you get a little diploma and certificate.

I've done it several times and we did it for the TV show. It's fantastic for kids. And Perugia is a really interesting city. And not, you know, not too far from Rome or Tuscany if you want to make your way there. Yeah, it's right. It's quite close to a CZ, right? Yes, yes. What is, this is going to be a tough one, but what's been one of

your most favorite, like, wine tasting experiences? Oh, gosh. Well, there's the one in Castle Vatre, which meant a lot to me. I went into the fields that I think my family must have tended. And it wasn't quite, it was a fortified wine made from barbaric grapes, but also the leaves of cherries, not the actual cherries.

It's like a cherry wine. And that meant a lot to me personally because of the land. So you don't just talk about food in your Dream of Italy newsletter on your show. You also talk about textiles and local artisans. There are artisans everywhere in every town and doing everything from jewelry to ceramics. But one of the coolest experiences, and I know one that I've sent a lot of readers and viewers to do, is to go to the Kianti Kashmir farm. She's actually an expat. She's a veterinarian, Nora Kravitz, and she started this farm of Kashmir goats.

And you can go and meet the animals. and then you can go to her little shop. She has artisans who then turn the cashmere into scarfs. And even then they use sort of everything because she even uses the milk and makes soap. And actually, that's the soap I use every day, the soap from Nora's cashmere goats. It is the most beautiful little piece of land in Kianti. It is such a cool experience to see the product from beginning to end. And so I highly recommend that.

Do you have any good spa recommendations? Going to Italian spas is my favorite thing. I actually want to, and I speak about it a lot. I almost think they should pay me. No, I'm not kidding. I don't get paid for any of these recommendations. But one of my favorite places actually on the planet is Satornia, which is in the Morema area of Tuscany, which is sort of the wild part of Tuscany toward the coast.

It's less crowded, more beautiful. And there are hot springs there that the ancient Romans, people have been going to these hot springs since Roman times. And they're believed to have these healing properties. And I really think that they do. And there's a resort. You can go on your own for free. And it's one of the most beautiful, the way that the water comes out and it's sort of staggered on this little hill. one of the most beautiful thermal springs in, I think, the world.

So you can go on your own for free, just go and take the waters. But if you want to splurge and have a really unique experience, I love Termadee, Satornia, the resort. And you can spend it, you know, all day in the water if you want, and just get out and have lunch, and there's golf, and there's tennis. And it's truly, truly a relaxing and magical experience. So I've gone there a number of several times over over the span of many years. Actually, Sotorna was the feature in the first issue of Dream of Italy 16 years ago.

So it's a place that means a lot to me. And I think it has it has some really incredible magic going on right there. Well, that sounds perfect. Okay. Adding to the list. Final question, Kathy. So if you had to live in one place in Italy for the rest of your life, which one? Which town would it be? Oh my God. That is an impossible question. You can do three.

If I would have said Rome and there's a time in my life, I would say Florence. Those are two of my really, really favorite cities. I also love Puglia and I could see living in a little beach town in Poole. surrounded by gigantic olive trees and stone walls. And I think the best thing to do would be to have a place in the city and a place out in the country. And then I know you said three, but I love Tuscany and I love the Morema. It's in southwestern Tuscany. And it was actually mostly marshland that's been, that's been drained. And it is just a little bit wild and a little bit wonderful.

And we filmed there in our Tuscany episode, we went to film with these Tuscan cowboys who raised horses and they look like there's something out of like an American Western film and they wear these long coats and ride the horses through the old marshland and the beaches. as I mentioned, Satornia is a beautiful place to go in Morema. They're famous for, actually, they have these famous dogs that I love. There are Morema sheep dogs. So it's just a slower place. And it's a place that it feels much more undiscovered than the area, say, around Florence. Great tips. And I definitely want to check.

out these Italian cowboys. Yes. Yes. Yes. They end their Tuscany episode and it's really beautiful, beautiful camera work and I'd love for you to check them out as well. Yeah. I mean, I don't think you can go wrong with spa and then Italian cowboys.

Yeah. It sounds like a perfect weekend. Morema is a great place to go. Yes. Well, thank you so much for talking to me today, Kathy. Where can people find out more about you and see your show? So dream of Italy.com. You can see the show there.

You can sign up for the publication. You can give us your email and we'll send you the downloadable travel guides that go with all the episodes of the TV show. And I hope that I shared some really good tips for your listeners. You definitely have. Thank you again, Kathy. Thank you. Oh my gosh. What great advice, especially about the spa.

I'm only now starting to get into the whole spa thing. And that sounds really blissful right now. And guess what? My mom has just arrived in England to visit me and tomorrow we are flying to Turino. I am so excited. As Kathy and I both said, Tarino or Turin, as it's better known in English, it's one of our favorite cities in Italy, I think one of the most underrated cities. There you will find gorgeous palaces and piazzas.

There's also a lot of industry, especially the automotive industry. and so there's just this really great buzz around the city. There's a lot of music and art. It's just such a fun place to be. So at some point, I will definitely have to do an episode dedicated to Torino. What are your summer plans? Tell me, Deli, tell me, hop on over to Instagram and tell me where you are headed. I am so curious and I always love getting new ideas.

That's all for now. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.