All posts tagged: bergamo

eating pizza with Winta

Guide to Black Owned Italy

Last year I introduced Tripadvisor’s audience to my dolce vita with a Guide to Black Owned Italy. But that was just scratching the surface. Immediately after I found out about more businesses and many of you sent me others. The response was exciting and inspiring. Want to know one thing I wish people knew that I have learned while living in Italy? How diverse the country is. In both its ancient history — the diverse Roman Empire — to recent history like Italian Somaliland to immigration now, Italy’s diverse population influences much of what it means to “be Italian.” Coffee from Ethiopia and Marco Polo’s China expeditions contributing to the origins of pasta are far too often ignored and unknown. Often, this history is “hiding” in plain site: William Shakespeare’s Othello, Blackamoor art, the stories of Alessandro de’Medici, the Black member of the famed Florentine Medicis. There was even a Black Roman emperor, Septimus Severus from 193 – 211. To say “there are very few black women in Milan and Italy as a whole” as …

Weekend in Bergamo via a Vespa

The last month has been full of travel: Paris, St. Tropez, Rome, Bergamo and now I’m back in London before I head to Ibiza this afternoon. Of all of the wonderful places I’ve visited in the last month, I must say, the city of Bergamo now holds a special place in my heart. Studying abroad in Milan, Bergamo was where we students flew out of for the cheaper flights. Heading to the airport, you could see the walled city in the distance up on the hill. Always found it intriguing but you know how it goes, you never take advantage of the sites nearest to you. It took almost a decade later and a very special guy to bring me to Bergamo for a weekend. To know Bergamo is to love it. Really. Whenever I tell people that my boyfriend is from there, they either have never heard of it or go bonkers and regale me with a story about their last visit to the city. It’s pretty cool. Here’s a little Vespa ride through the …