Kathryn Occhipinti, MD, for Conversational Italian for Travelers books
Ciao a tutti! Once again, here is a blog with unique travel tips that I would like to share.
About once a month, I have been re-blogging a post about lesser-known sites or places to visit in Italy under the title “Your Italian Travel Tips.”
The post for June was written by Orna O’Reilly, a former interior designer from Ireland, who also worked for many years in South Africa and Mozambique. Now living in Puglia in the south of Italy, Orna is writing full time and her award winning blog covers all things Italian. Her first book, on home renovation, was written specifically with women in mind and is available on Amazon.com and on Lulu.com. It is called ‘Renovate & Redecorate without Breaking a Nail.’ Orna regularly writes for popular Italy Magazine and for glossy Irish magazine Anthology.
Orna comments about why she wrote this blog:
“I have always been a great fan of the Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century. At school, the nuns encouraged us to learn quite a lot of their poems off by heart and I can still remember large chunks of wonderful odes and sonnets. But the poem I loved most was ‘Ode to the West Wind’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley and I developed a great curiosity about his life and his early death by drowning off the coast of Liguria.”
“The Gulf of La Spezia, named after the main town on this deep bay in the Ligurian Sea, became widely known as the Gulf of Poets due to the incredible number of poets and artists who settled there over the centuries… And the Gulf of La Spezia is particularly beautiful, with a golden light all of its own. A special place.”
In the blog to follow, Orna tells us about many of the special towns along the Ligurian coast of Italy, along with their importance to many well-known poets through the centuries. Read on and I’m sure you will enjoy the unique insights and beautiful photos that she shares about this special part of the Italian coastline.
The storm that hit the Gulf of La Spezia on 8th July, 1822 was sudden and fateful. Percy Bysshe Shelley, en route from Livorno in his boat, Aerial, to his home in the village of San Terenzo, was tragically drowned.
I have always been a great fan of the Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century. At school, the nuns encouraged us to learn quite a lot of their poems off by heart and I can still remember large chunks of wonderful odes and sonnets. But the poem I loved most was ‘Ode to the West Wind’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley and I developed a great curiosity about his life and his early death by drowning off the coast of Liguria.
The Gulf of La Spezia, named after the main town on this deep bay in the Ligurian Sea, became widely known as the Gulf of Poets due to…
Conversational Italian! 