Italy: Umbria and the Marche

Back in the 1980s, Dana Facaros spent three of the best years of her life with her family in a tiny hamlet (pop. 52) in Umbria's Valnerina, without a car or telephone, but where she and her husband Michael Pauls were instant celebrities by the mere fact of having two cute little kids who went to the local school and immediately learned all the parolaccia (swear words) in Umbrian dialect. Along with acquiring in-depth experience of Italy's public transport system, developing an expensive taste for truffles, having long Sunday picnics in the Piano Grande and learning how to tell one 14th-century painter of Madonnas from another, Dana and Michael have been writing about the region and the next-door region of Le Marche ever since, and go back to visit as often as possible.