Well yes, you are always welcome in our family but lately our house has been very much under siege…boxes, mess, disorganization while organizing and preparing for the next chapter in our family history.

If you haven’t heard yet, in a little less than a month, we will plant our feet at the toe of the Italian boot for a year or two. We decided to relocate our family oversees for an extended period and we ALSO decided on a destination that is NOT Florence, Rome or Tuscany, where most people dream of when they dream of Italy. We chose Sicily for many reasons and one of them is that neither of us have any family or friends there which ensures that our move WILL be an adventure of discovery and will provide us with experiences similar to those of our clients seeing Italy for the 1st time. As a matter of fact I am from the north and all my family lives up near the Alps, more French than Italian but NOT as snooty (sorry French friends).

Turin is now a lovely city, but when I grew up, right across from the FIAT automobile factory, it didn’t remind anyone of the rolling hills of Tuscany. It had a distinct utilitarian design painted in drab and muted grays common to many socialist communities. Then it was well-known because of the jobs provided by the industrial factories. People moved there from all over Italy to work. Now Turin has grown into a beautiful city and yet we were drawn to the south, to Sicily, a place where the people are friendly. Even though the places are new to us there is the feeling of being welcomed to an extended family which permeates everything.

My husband doesn’t like the cold, having been sheltered by the temperate climate of Southern California for most of his life. We both like warm climates and I was struck by the genuine warmth of the population, where even casual friends make you feel like part of their own families. It is that beautiful aura that I have long missed in all my years abroad which has me so eager to move to Sicily. I love how Sicilians welcome people with the PASSION they have for what they do, and the LOVE they have for their land and their FAMILY.

All of these traits, PASSION, LOVE and FAMILY is why SEE ITALY was born!

See Italy was born out of necessity for me to share with PASSION the LOVE I have for my country, the unconditional LOVE that only my FAMILY gives me day in and day out. I longed for and missed those feelings for 20 years before founding SEE ITALY. I wanted to build a company that provided what I had as a child and had missed as an adult since moving from Italy. I want everyone to experience the warm acceptance and love of being part of an extended Italian family that I have described to my friends for so many years. It is like Sunday dinners on warm summer evenings shared with friends and family that you wished would never end. Now I experience these feelings every day at work by following my heart.

I realized that people who are employees often don’t like to talk about their jobs when they are off work, while self-employed people who love what they do often can’t stop talking about what they do because their business is their life and their life is their business. I am doubly blessed because my life is my country and my country is my life too!

So when we hear back that our customers had the best vacation of their life with us in ITALY, I smile, I thank my staff and I thank the Lord for giving me this revelation 5 years ago. Without this love I would have withered away slowly and lost my identity. Perhaps this explains why I never took my husband’s last name after we were married.

I truly hope one day you can come to visit us in Sicily. You will discover what I’ve described and you will understand why that place has won my heart.

BTW…look out for a FAM to Sicily next spring…I will be there, will you?

Love,