The life of a travel author is funny. You work to inspire people to travel differently—more slowly, more intentionally, off the beaten track—and then you wind up being inspired yourself.

When I asked Olivia Windsor of Livguine to write a guest post on Turin for me, I never guessed I’d read it and declare, “That’s it! My next Italian destination!”

So when I told my husband that if I passed my Italian B1 language exam (required for citizenship by marriage, see the posts about that exam and my complicated citizenship journey ) we needed to celebrate by going to Turin, I was only half joking.

The thing is, once you say something out loud, you are more likely to make it happen. Love that soap box effect. Try it. Today, tell one person something you’d like to add to your life and stand still while the magic of possibility starts raining around your shoulders.

I passed the exam, but by then, we’d already booked tickets. We didn’t know if the tenor of the trip would be celebratory or condoling, but either way, we needed to be back on Italian soil. Raise your hand if you know what I’m talking about, even if it’s for a different slice of home.

The trip began with 3 days in Spello, which nourished my spirit like a bicerin on a cold day. Once you read below, you’ll know all about bicerin! In any case, it filled me—catching up with old friends, buying just pressed olive oil from our butcher (we didn’t see him because he was picking olives, but we got to chat with his wife), eating Umbrian style while taking notes for upcoming books, AND I got the recipe for brutti ma buoni from Spello’s bakery! I like to include a recipe in my cozy mysteries, and for this one I’d chosen the cookies known as brutti ma buoni, ugly but good. But no recipe I tried measured up. Imagine my delight when Giovanna at the bakery handed over a pen and paper so I could write it down. I came home and made them and it knocked our collective socks off.