Have you ever visited Copenhagen or dreamed about it? The first time I went was nearly 2 years ago to the day and it was pretty much love at first sight. Scandinavia in the summertime is like that I think.

I was pregnant at the time and we were on our honeymoon, so there are a lot of nostalgic memories for me tied to the city too. Everything felt clean, orderly, quiet yet alive … almost wholesome.

The Danes rode their bicycles everywhere, the weather was my version of a perfect summer with sunny days and a light windbreaker for the evening.

We spent our time bakery hopping, visiting museums and palaces, and it was where we bought our very first baby clothes for our daughter and giggled with contentment as we looked at them just outside the King’s rose garden.

We’ve been back to Copenhagen twice since then and each time I fall in love a little bit more. We spent a night there in January when Denmark experienced unusual snow and it was totally fairytale like. It felt like stepping into a world of winter wonderland and my husband and I considered that it we might like Copenhagen even more in the dead of January with a glass of mulled wine from the Torvehallerne market as we watched the locals ice skate over frozen lakes.

So it was a pleasure to spend some time on my new podcast Scandinavia Travel Tales talking to local guide Rikke Bisgaard Svendsen about this magical city. We started by talking briefly about its history and how a small fishing village came to be capital of Denmark before chatting about which of the iconic sights is truly worth the visit. Three trips later and I still haven’t seen the Little Mermaid or been to Tivoli - Rikke told me to skip the mermaid and check out Tivoli (one of the oldest theme parks in the world) next time.

Here’s a snippet from our episode

Listen now on Spotify

Listen now on Apple Podcasts

What I really enjoyed was getting an overview of each of the neighbourhoods of the city as it’s a chance to soak in real, local life rather than just sticking to the city center. We spoke about things to do that aren’t on everyone’s TikTok or optimised AI itinerary which was also really refreshing and I hope it gives you some ideas for how you can get a flavor of Copenhagen.

Finally, I asked Rikke about a place she loved to visit that tourists completely look past and her answer really surprised me. She decided to share an activity she loves is to go hunting for the statues of women in the city - noticeably fewer than those of men and even animals - and she shared the story of Mary (not Donaldson) a sculpture to memorialize Denmark’s colonial impact in the Caribbean. You can bet I’m going to check it out on my next visit this September.

I hope you enjoy the episode and if you do, I’d love you to consider leaving a star review. It would mean the world to me if you could click ‘follow’ on Spotify or Apple podcasts. It helps the algorithm promote my show so I can reach more people interested in traveling Scandinavia in a sustainable, responsible way and hearing from the locals who make this their home.

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I hope you have a great week in-store. I’m gearing up for my parents’ imminent arrival from Australia and so excited to share our new home with them before we set off on a two-week trip around Scandinavia - I can’t wait to report back on what we get up to.

Ciao for now,

Olivia

A quick note to let you know that my new travel podcast is officially live and you can now listen to the first three episodes on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

The first episode is a solo one to let you know what this podcast is all about and why I started it.

The next is an interview with Laura Hall, a journalist who has lived in Copenhagen for the last 10 years and traveled all over the region. She’s just published her novel The Year I Lay My Head Above Water, that follows her year of swimming in Scandinavia in search of a better life. She’s a natural storyteller and gives so many ideas about travel possibilities in the region and just a flavour of what each of the countries is about (we literally spoke about what each one sounds/smells/tastes like).

And the third episode is an interview with Satu Vänskä-Westgarth from 50 Degrees North about how to plan an unforgettable trip to the region. Originally from Finland, Satu lives in Norway and gives lots of practical advice about how to get stuck into the planning of a trip and work out when and where to go.

If you’d like to follow the podcast, just hit follow or subscribe - it helps other listeners find the show and would mean the world to reach more people. If you enjoy it and feel so inclined, I’d love you to leave me a star rating or a review.

But more than that, I just hope you will enjoy armchair travelling through this wonderful part of the world that I’m currently calling home. There are lots of great interviews to come including with Trine Hahnemann (we speak all about food in Denmark), Rikke from Copenhagen Free Walking Tours, Johanna Kindvall (we speak all about Swedish Fika) and so many more.

Tak for your support!

Olivia x

I’ve been quiet here for the last month. Soaking in our first Danish summer, mumming, working, reflecting on the last 5 months living in a new country and taking in the huge changes we’ve had ever since we got married in 2024 and I found out I was pregnant 1 week later.

I’ve got to be honest and admit that everything has caught up with me lately. It’s been kind of a low frequency in the background for a while - stress, overwhelm, and a general feeling that I’m not living how I want to be. A constant backdrop of negativity fuelled by burnout and no uninterrupted sleep since I was pregnant.

‘Forest bathing’ is also helping me to slow down

But I’m relieved to report that I’m doing something about it. One of those things was picking up the book ‘A Brain That Breathes’ by Jodi Wilson. One of my followers shared recently that it ‘changed her life’ and, quite frankly, I think it might change mine too. It’s practical tips for how to find ‘breathing space’ every single day so we can navigate the modern world that our brains were simply not built for. And I like that it acknowledges stress is unavoidable, but it’s about how we choose to respond to it.

She asks you to think about what actually matters to you, what your moral code is and what you believe in. I’d invite you to start thinking about these things too. She talks about the importance of getting sunshine, moving your body and deep rest. And something that I have always found hard to do, getting comfortable with uncertainty. Because all that we are promised is this present moment. We are all busy, wired and tired, stressed, but the consequences of not slowing down can seriously mean we are speeding towards serious illness and premature death.

The other thing that has got me feeling more like myself is having a new creative project to sink my teeth into. It will come as no surprise to my friends and family that I love talking to people and meeting new interesting people. And that’s why I’m so excited to tell you that I’m launching my Scandinavia Travel Tales podcast on the 4th August.

I had the idea for it shortly after we moved to Aarhus one day when I was searching for travel podcasts about Denmark, Sweden and Norway. I quickly discovered nothing in English existed. I was so curious and eager to learn about our new home, social customs, the food, the traditions, the exotic places we could travel to here that I genuinely wished a podcast about those very things existed.

And that’s when I thought, why don’t I create it myself?! I ummed and ahhed about it for a while - where on earth would I find time to take on such a big project (the book talks about our perceived sense of time too! Hint, we need to get off social media). But it was the first time in a very long time that I felt positive and excited by the idea of having my very own project to work on. My husband encouraged me to give it a shot and now I’m happy to announce that I’ve had 6 wonderful interviews and am ready to launch very soon.

I’ve had some wonderful chats with locals as well as internationals making a life here - both perspectives that I think are really important. My chat with journalist Laura Hall who lives in Copenhagen really stuck with me - she brought the travel possibilities of Scandinavia to life in a way I’d never even considered. She speaks at length in our episode together about visiting the Faroe Islands and some incredible moments in Greenland. I’m also looking forward to reading her new book The Year I Lay My Head Above Water as I think she might have some helpful lessons for dealing with this sort of general malaise I’ve been feeling.

I was also thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with Danish cookbook royalty Trine Hahnemann and I think I’d like her to live at my house now. She brought Danish cuisine to life for me - I knew virtually nothing before our chat besides Smørrebrød and pastry. But what was the more interesting point was how she connects food to culture and how Denmark has and is changing.

You can check out the podcast trailer here if you listen on Spotify or here if you’re an Apple Podcasts person.

I’d so appreciate your support and if this interests you at all, please subscribe on your favourite podcast app. By doing this, it actually helps other listeners find my show (the algorithm!)

My next interviews in August will be with Johanna Kindvall (author of Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break), Niki Brantmark from My Scandinavian Home to talk about Malmo, Lean Timms an Australian photographer who lives part-time in the Osterlen region of Sweden, and the French-Danish owners of a stunning hotel on the island Ærø. If there’s anything you want to know about any of these topics, let me know!

That’s it for now. I’ll be back in touch when the podcast officially launches. Do let me know what you think!

Have a great week,

Olivia

I am writing from paradise. I have discovered summer in Denmark, and when it’s good, it is heavenly. Long, languid days under a sun that never seems to set. Temperatures maxing out at a civilised 22-25 degrees (Italy could never!). Buckets of sweet strawberries. An evening breeze that still calls for a duvet.

Our Danish neighbours linger over slow dinners at long tables in the communal courtyard. There’s outdoor opera, jazz festivals, days at the beach, ice cream with guf at the marina, and everyone in fantastic spirits.

It’s been a long time since I last wrote, and somehow it’s already the end of June. Since my last letter, we made a surprise two-week trip back to Italy with about three days’ notice, bouncing between Rome and Turin more than once.

I’d been on a waitlist at a hospital in Rome for over a year to remove a rather large ovarian cyst, discovered at the start of my pregnancy, and the source of a lot of stress throughout it: extra scans, specialist appointments, even an MRI. So when the call finally came, it was a relief. Of course, it coincided with the first heatwave of the year, and we landed back into a balmy 35 degrees.

Getting there and back was a little bit the trip from hell. The best flight to Rome left Copenhagen at 6:15am, so the plan was to head over the day before and have a full day in the city before flying out. The kind of thing my husband and I would have done in a heartbeat pre-baby. Instead, our trip really began the moment the bus pulled into Copenhagen - our daughter threw up all over my husband.

There were good moments in between. But mostly, it’s been a big lesson in slowing down.

A day in Copenhagen

Oh, how we love Copenhagen, especially with the sunshine out. We took the Kombardo Express from Aarhus, a bus that drives straight onto the ferry, and I highly recommend it. We crossed Zealand, the island Copenhagen sits on, passing glorious sommerhuse and long beaches I found myself daydreaming about for a future getaway.

We arrived early and made a beeline for a café I’d read about, Hans Coffee, for a coffee and a BMO, a Danish staple, short for bolle, med, ost: a bread roll with butter and cheese. My husband showed me the move all his Danish colleagues swear by: a bit of strawberry jam on top. I’ll admit it, I loved it.

We strolled past the Royal Palace, watched the little GoBoats glide by along the water and tried Smørrebrød (open faced sandwich) at the Torvehallerne market. Things were getting pretty busy by this point so we headed to the gardens and wandered through the Botanical Gardens, slowly making our way to the King’s Rose Garden and the park next to it. The last time we had been at the Botanical Gardens, I was pregnant with our daughter and now here we were with her running around through it!

We went out to Juno the Bakery (although it was a real trek and there are so many other great bakeries in Copenhagen that I would go to next time), walked along the waterfront and made our way back through the charming neighborhood Nørrebro where we watched some Danes play bocce and drink wine in the sun. We have discovered that Danish people love bocce - we have a pitch right near our house in Aarhus! We're heading back to Copenhagen for a week in September when my parents visit, and I can't wait to explore again at a slower pace.

Sankt Hans aka Midsummer Eve

We have been so excited to celebrate our very first Danish midsummer. Known as Sankt Hans in Denmark, it’s a tradition celebrated on the 23rd June - the evening before St John’s Day (24 June - which is coincidentally the patron saint of Turin where my husband is from!) It marks the arrival of midsummer and is one of Denmark’s most beloved summer traditions.

Aarhus at 11pm last night!

The celebration combines Christian and pagan traditions and is named after John the Baptist. However, this date has been celebrated long before Christianity with people from Northern Europe celebrating the summer solstice with bonfires in the belief that fire could ward off evil spirits.

Danes still celebrate with a big bonfire often built on a beach, by a lake or in a park. Everyone gathers together to enjoy one of the longest summer evenings of the year and sing a traditional midsummer song (Midsommervisen). Sometimes, Danes still burn a witch on top of the bonfire although today it’s seen as a bit old fashioned. Many families bring picnic food, drinks and cook up a BBQ and it’s a wonderful celebration that involves the entire community.

Our celebrations kicked off last week with a little party at our daughter’s nursery complete with a bonfire and smores and lots of songs. And then last night was the real Sankt Hans Eve - we went to a local park where little bonfires were set up, kids were running around with long sticks and pastry tied around them to toast in the fire (bonfire bread) and lots of Danish songs were sung. We then headed towards the port where they had one of the bigger celebrations with the big bonfire being lit on the sea at 9.45pm, the Danish midsummer song and traditional speeches.

Scandinavia Travel Podcast

I teased about this in my last newsletter but then we had to race back to Italy and all my podcast plans were thrown into disarray. But this is back on track and I have just recorded my first episode with Satu one of the owners of Fifty Degrees North this week.

Future podcast guests include journalist Laura Hall who has just released her memoir about cold water swimming across Scandinavia; Trine Hahnemann an absolute icon of Scandinavian cooking who has just released her latest recipe book Midnight Sun (can you believe she lives between Piedmont, where my husband is from, and Denmark?!); the Italian founders from My Dear Copenhagen; and Rikke one of the founders from Copenhagen Guides.

If you have a question for any of these wonderful women, or there’s someone else you’d love to hear me interview, leave a comment and let me know!

My grandmother passed away this week in Australia, nearly 91 years old, after a long battle with Parkinson’s. I’m grateful I got to see her at Christmas and introduce her to my daughter, her great-granddaughter, before she left this world.

It’s the first loss I’ve faced since moving abroad, and it’s made me reckon with something I hadn’t fully let myself feel. Living so far from home means there will be more of these moments to come, and I won’t always be able to get on a plane in time. That’s a hard truth to acknowledge.

But my grandmother’s own life keeps coming back to me as I write this. She raised seven children, and only once they were grown did she finally set off to see the world, India, the Middle East, all over Europe. She spent decades waiting for her turn, and then she took it.

I don’t want to wait. Living abroad isn’t the romantic, permanent-holiday thing it can look like from the outside. It’s a choice you make again and again, one that comes with real costs, distance from the people you love, chief among them. But it’s a choice, and I want to keep choosing it well. To seize what’s in front of me, throw myself into this culture and this language, keep exploring and learning, rather than letting the days pass on autopilot. We only get one life. None of us knows how much time we’ll have in it. That uncertainty isn’t just the hard part of living far away, it’s the reason to live fully, wherever you are.

Liv x

We are on the other side of a long weekend in Denmark (Ascension Day) and gearing up for the last public holiday in a while on May 25. We made the most of the weekend by hiring a car for a few days (my goodness this is expensive in Denmark!) and getting out and about to explore our new region in a way that is really only possible when you have a car. More on our adventures below.

Introducing….a Scandinavia Travel Podcast!

I’ve also been working on a fun project that I’m really excited about. By now, you’ll know that I love travel as an Australian who moved to Europe 7 years ago but Scandinavia is really new for me. I’ve spent the last 7 years learning so much about Italy (hell, I even married an Italian and have an Italian baby!) and it will always be one of my great loves. Now that we are living in Scandinavia though, I am really curious about it and itching to explore and learn. So there I was one afternoon, scrolling through Spotify and wondering where to begin my travel research for our new home when I realised that no travel podcast about Scandinavia (or any of the countries within) exists… And so, I’ve decided to launch my own.

It will be a way for me to learn more about this magical land of snow and ice (ok and sometimes sun) and take you along for the journey with me. It’ll be a way for me to meet locals and people with interesting stories who want to take us behind the curtain and see what Scandinavia is all about. And I hope it will also be a way for all of us to fall head over heels in love with Scandinavia and discover travel possibilities we don’t even know exist yet. In a time where over-tourism is a very real thing, I also hope to encourage people to travel mindfully and consider destinations away from the crowds.

I’ve got my first interviews lined up with a journalist living in Copenhagen, Danish cookbook royalty, a Danish tour guide and a Finnish woman living in Norway who runs a Nordic tour operator. Do you have someone that comes to mind that I should invite on the show? Rachel Khoo is on my wishlist!

Exploring Jutland

We hit the road on Thursday last week for the very first time and rented a car to do some daytrips from Aarhus. As soon as we got into the countryside, we were greeted by fields of yellow flowers everywhere called rapeseed. I’ve got to say, besides the flowers, I wasn’t particularly inspired by the views - Denmark is pretty flat. That said, we had a fabulous time exploring some of the nearby villages.

First up was Ebeltoft. A charming seaside village in Djursland, up further north than Aarhus. Our first view was the sea and enormous old ships in the little port. After wandering into the center of town we were immediately charmed by cobblestone streets and higgledy piggledy colourful cottages. Oh, and of course a hundred Danish flags flanking the sidewalk! We went for coffee at Go Kaffe with a gorgeous garden for our daughter to run around in and then after a stroll we had a beer at the brewery in town. You’ve got to love Denmark for kids - Sofia kept herself occupied by playing at an outdoor station with pots and pans and cutlery. She had the time of her life although we almost had a heart attack when we saw her start playing with a knife…All’s well that ends well, and the Danish rain chased us onto the next adventure…

Next up was a manor house called Gammel Estrup. Andrea and I absolutely love a castle or noble house and our gardens, something we discovered on our trip to the UK last year (I think my dream job in another life might be working at the National Trust), so we jumped at the chance to explore this place. It showcases what life was like among the nobility and servants over a period of 400 years and is so well done. The best part? The total lack of crowds despite a big tour bus being there (they were at lunch the entire time we visited!)

That afternoon, we made our way back to Aarhus and went to a beach we’ve not yet seen called Moesgård Beach. We got icecream and walked on the sand, our daughter squealed with delight over tasting icecream and demanded more and then ran back and forth as the tide came in. There’s something about living close to the sea that just feels so right.

The next day, we started closer to home and went for coffee in Silkeborg. There was once a fortified castle here but it was destroyed during the Swedish wars in the 17th century. The town went on to become a place of industry when the paper mill opened up in the 1860s but is now closed. It is set on a beautiful lake and there are some gorgeous houses around. We had a coffee, a little look around and then hit the road for Viborg.

We had been really looking forward to seeing Viborg as we heard it had a beautiful cathedral. Unluckily for us, the cathedral was unexpectedly closing within 10 minutes of our visit so we had to make it quick. The town itself is one of Denmark’s oldest and most historically significant. 37 Danish Kings have been crowned here and it was also the birthplace of the Reformation in Denmark. Unfortunately, due to a fire in 1726, many of the medieval buildings were completely destroyed. The cathedral was rebuilt in the 19th century and is our favourite Danish church so far - but to be honest, it doesn’t take much. The ones in Aarhus have been completely repainted white inside which my Italian husband just cannot get over. The whole point of a Gothic church is they’re meant to be dark inside!

So that was our adventures around the east coast of Jutland so far and it’s made me really curious to go further afield and see what else Denmark is like. It is so stimulating to be somewhere completely different from what I am used to. I think next, I’d like to go to the island of Fyn and see Odense where Hans Christian Anderson was from or perhaps the pretty island Ærø that some of my lovely readers told me about. Malmo and Skåne in Sweden are high on my list too, especially after the NY Times recent article about what a foodie place this is.

In other news, we had our Danish next-door neighbours over for dinner last week too and it was a success! They are from a town near the border with Germany and after 9 years living in Aarhus they are planning to move back home. They have a 5 month old and want to be closer to family, which we can both understand. So perhaps there goes future playdates but it was great to have some Danes over for a meal!

And my husband would be furious if I didn’t mention that Aarhus won the Danish football league for the first time in 40 years! There were many celebrations here in town (although nothing like in Italy) and it was just such a nice vibe all around. Andrea went to watch the final game at one of the grounds where they had big screens set up and enjoyed the festivities, and then we all saw the parade through town on Monday with the team triumphantly wielding their trophy.

And that’s a wrap for life lately in Denmark. I’ll keep you posted on the podcast and until then, let me know what you want to hear about in the comments.

Ciao,

Liv

Today I want to tell you about one of my favorite places in the world. And not only - I want to invite you there to experience it too.

I’m talking about Umbria. More specifically, my friend Sarah and Salvatore’s agriturismo, La Cuccagna, nestled in the Umbrian hills above the Tiber river.

I first discovered this magical place in 2019 as I prepared to move to Italy. I read about their farmhouse on the WWOOF website as I planned to spend a year working my way up and down Italy on organic farms and wineries to learn more about the food industry. Flash forward to August 2019 and I’ll never forget the drive through the hills, so different to the manicured landscape of Tuscany and pulling up to the site of this gorgeous farmhouse with an infinity pool and blazing orange sunset. I spent a week there and became such good friends with the owners, that they helped me plan my wedding many years later in the area.

Here we are with Sarah and Sal on our wedding day

Over the years I’ve gone back many times. In 2023, my husband and I joined our friends for the local celebration in Gubbio that happens every May 15 - the Festa dei Ceri. It’s one of the most incredible traditions where three enormous giant candlesticks topped with saint figurines are raced through town and up the hill towards the Basilica of St Ubaldo to whom the festival is paying homage. You cannot imagine the atmosphere as locals pack into the main piazza to watch this event and then traipse up the hill to see how the event ends in the afternoon. You can feel the hairs on your arm standing on edge and it’s the kind of event that sweeps you up into the emotion of the locals and makes you feel like crying happy tears that there are still places in the world where medieval traditions are honoured year in, year out.

Another annual event we have enjoyed from our La Cuccagna home base is the Infiorata flower festival in Spello. It’s so much more than just a flower festival though. Locals cultivate flowers for a year in the lead-up to the event. In the days before they delicately pluck the petals off the flowers dividing them by colour into paper boxes so they are ready for the big night when they work from sunset to sunrise painstakingly crafting religious tapestries made entirely out of flowers. The next morning the priest walks over the floral artwork into church to celebrate mass.

For the month of June, another local village Bevagna runs a medieval festival every weekend. I think it’s pure happiness strolling the cobblestone streets, spying the Italians in their medieval dressup and feeling like you’ve travelled back in time. You can wander with a beer in one hand, a porchetta panini in the other and see medieval artisans at work and enjoy performances too. La Cuccagna is the perfect baes to experience any of these events.

In 2024, my entire family flew from Australia and my husband’s parents drove down from Turin to spend the week with us at La Cuccagna. Sarah helped plan our wedding using their agriturismo as home base and it was the most unforgettable week imaginable. In the lead up, we lazed by the pool in the sun and the night before the wedding, they hosted 50 of our closest friends and family for the most perfect aperitivo and pizza party imaginable. And yes the fireflies did make an appearance - as did a real Italian sererande by my husband and some local musicians.

And then last year, we took our daughter there to experience the magic of La Cuccagna too. She had her first-ever swim in their pool, breathed in that crisp countryside air, spied her first butterflies and dined in their breakfast room.

Some of my happiest memories have taken place here and that’s why I want you to experience the magic of La Cuccagna too. I want you to stay at a place where you are hosted with love and care. Where the owners organise an authentic truffle hunt (did you know most are staged?) Where Sarah gets you into this tiny restaurant with a killer view in a pretty town not on the guidebooks. Where Sal spends two days preparing the best pizza of your life (he’s from Campania originally!) Where you get to slow down, wander towns far away from the madding crowds in nearby Tuscany and experience the Italy you have always imagined.

La Cuccagna has 6 rooms - 4 are in the farmhouse, then there’s an independent cottage and an independent apartment. All have kitchen facilities. The property can be rented out as a whole or you can rent individual rooms. It’s available for 7 nights at a time and check-in/checkout is always on a Saturday. Warning - you may never want to get out of bed here, the mattresses are just that comfortable. In fact, they are so comfortable that Sarah and Sal have had them shipped to guests all around the world (including us in Denmark)! So consider yourself warned.

If you’re wondering how to make it happen, let me help. The easiest thing is if you’re coming from the UK - there are direct flights from London to Perugia. From there, you can rent a car and it’s an easy 20 minute drive to La Cuccagna.

But chances are you will be coming from further afield, so my advice is to fly into Rome or Bologna and either rent a car from the airport and drive the 2-2.5 hours to La Cuccagna. Or, hop on a train to Perugia and pickup a hire car from there.

If you are interested in inquiring, send my friend Sarah an email at info@lacuccagna.com Mention Olivia sent you and you’ll be treated to some special local sparkling wine on arrival.

And if you do go and stay, please tell me about the happy memories you created there too.

Spring in Aarhus

So many things to report but May seems to be a wonderful month in Aarhus. So many events. Great weather. Longer and longer evenings as the sun sets after 9pm.

Today we went for a glorious walk through the forest. The forest floor is blanketed in a sea of green with pretty white flowers blooming everywhere. The trees are full of lush leaves now and the cherry trees are a sea of pink and white. How beautiful Aarhus is in the springtime. Is there anything better than springtime in Denmark?

Yesterday we went to the street festival on Jægergårdsgade and what a delightful community atmosphere there was. Little artisan stalls set up selling their wares. All the restaurants took over the street as it was pedestrianised for the event. We sat and enjoyed gourmet hot dogs and an IPA in the sunshine while Sofia slept and we met the chef - a former judge of the best sausage competition at the annual Aarhus food festival every August.

Perhaps our best purchase of the day were three little quilted flags - Australian, Italian and Danish!

Danish Traditions

As we throw ourselves into life Danish style, we enjoyed the sweet treat traditions for Great Prayer Day. I ran down to the local bakery and got us our cardamom scented buns called ‘Hveder’ that we ate warm with lashings of butter. One of my followers let me know about the story behind this day. A 17th century King grew tired of all the scattered prayer holidays closing businesses and reducing tax revenue, so he consolidated them all into one : Great Prayer Day.

Building a community

Our social calendars have been filling up as friendships with both Danes and foreigners we’ve met here have deepened. I also went for coffee with a Danish mum who lives in the area and then on Friday we went for drinks with a couple from Torino (where my husband is from!) of all places - their son goes to nursery with our daughter. I can’t tell you how nice it feels to build a community here. If you live in Aarhus and you’re reading this - please reach out, I’d love to get a coffee and have a chat.

Danish people are so thoughtful. This week we woke up to a letter stuck to our front door from the three male uni students who live upstairs. They were hosting brunch this Saturday and wanted to let us know there might be a little more noise than normal and if it got too loud to not hesitate to let them know and they’d reign it in. I shared this on my Instagram story and one of my Australian followers joked that she needed to send her daughter to uni here to meet a nice Danish boy. Reader, I agree! But the kindness doesn’t end there - we’ve been helped by not one but two young Danish guys help my husband lift furniture up the four flights of stairs to our apartment when they’ve seen me severely struggling with it.

And then, just as our community is starting to feel real, so did my paperwork.

Danish residency is here

Perhaps the most exciting news of the last week is that I am now officially a Danish resident. This means I can officially start Danish classes just like my husband has. Andrea is 2 weeks into lessons and my goodness it sounds hard - especially the numbers. From what I understand you pronounce the numbers backwards so 35 becomes literally ‘5 and 30’. But how do you say 30? Half third. So put it together and it’s something like 5 and a half third….Apparently numbers in Danish are confusing even for speakers of other Scandinavian languages. And don’t get me started on how you say 50!

The month ahead

This month we have two public holidays to look forward to and we are dreaming about where we might go to explore. Copenhagen is always on our minds but we’ve waited a little too long to book the train and now it’s rather expensive - hot tip, book well in advance for the best train deals in Denmark. If there’s nice weather we are wondering about Samso - an island that you can get a ferry to known as the ‘garden’ of Denmark where lots of fruit and vegetables grow. We’re also curious about going to explore Odense aka the home of Hans Christian Anderson. Or maybe we’ll rent a car and explore Jutland - the peninsula we are livign on. Ther eare castles and pretty seaside towns like Ebeltoft and the artist’s village Skagen just waiting to be explored.

Are you interested in knowing more about places outside of Copenhagen in Denmark? And if that’s a yes, I have something in the works that I think you’re going to love. More soon….

I had ‘the’ moment yesterday. We were standing on Jagersgade, the little country market flags blowing in the wind, sun shining, the buzz of people milling around all buoyed by good weather as i waited for my husband to get me a coffee and my daughter smiled at me. And I felt it. This feels like home. Who knows for how long, but how happy I am that we took the leap and jumped to come here to this beautiful, safe country.

Spring is in the air today here in Aarhus and spirits are feeling much higher. The whites and pinks of the cherry blossoms are just starting to bloom, the sun keeps peeking out behind the clouds and there are bright blue skies and wonderful sunsets.

Today we went and explored the Botanical Gardens. They’re in a big dome greenhouse and are split into different sections by continent with plants from all over the world. There is even a butterfly house - you can imagine how much our daughter loved running through it.

We also stumbled upon another touristic site just by chance afterwards - perhaps the prettiest street in town - Møllestien. It’s a little street full of charming single story colourful houses and beautiful flowers artfully placed to grow across doorways or in pots by the front door.

Over Easter, our other discovery was Den Gamle By, an open-air museum that spans from the Middle Ages up until the early 2000s! They have taken the facades of homes and buildings from different time periods all around Denmark and reconstructed them in the park. The level of detail is incredible. From old cars, to actual shops/bakeries/butchers staffed with shopkeepers, and even cigarette machines from the 80s. We entered a gynaecologist’s office from the 1970s and you could open up the drawers of the desk to find objects straight from that time period. Imagine if Italy had something like this?!

We laughed to think that we are officially old enough to be included in the time museum that is Den Gamle By too - they even had a Blockbuster rental shop!

How it’s really going in Denmark

It’s been a big couple of weeks. Between our daughter starting nursery and getting sick almost immediately, surging hormones as my milk supply changes and navigating life in a new country, it’s been a lot. Throw in the absolutely terrible state of the world right now and things feel really heavy sometimes. Do you feel it too? I’ve asked my poor husband those middle of the night questions that I’m sure he is thrilled to hear (‘Did we make a big mistake moving here?!) and questioned myself about what my new purpose, goals and dreams are. Now don’t get me wrong - we are extremely lucky and grateful to have the opportunity to live here, but it’s a big change.

I have to say, I’ve lost myself a little bit in this transition from Olivia to mum and Italy to Denmark. Who am I if I’m not that 25-year-old who picked up and moved to Italy for a year (which turned into 7) and was chasing her passion for Italian culture, food and wine? Who am I if I no longer live in Italy? And who am I when it seems like all I have time for at the moment is being a mum (and sometimes I’m not even doing that job very well).

I am assured by a very wise friend with an older child who moved her life abroad, that this is completely normal. That what I’m feeling is valid - mumming is hard and doing it without a village is harder still. And to keep on hanging in there because eventually I will work out the answers to these questions as I go. I need to remind myself to enjoy the adventure and see where this new path takes me.

This week I did come up for a little air as I went for my first solo coffee since giving birth. My daughter had her first hour session at nursery without me in the classroom (yes onboarding your children in nursery for weeks is a thing in Denmark!) and I did feel a little reborn.

In other news, we met some of the parents from my daughter’s nursery for a play date and it feels nice to feel our social circle expanding. That is one of the big benefits of having a child when you move abroad - they are your ticket into socialising. I’ve also heard a dog is a very good way to make friends if you find yourself moving abroad sans children.

And thanks to my lovely community on Instagram, I have a coffee date pending with a Danish mum and another on the horizon with an English mum. We may quickly end up with more friends than we had in Rome if you can believe it!

Next week Andrea starts Danish classes - the government pay for your course up to intermediate level and you have 5 years to complete it. I am looking forward to getting my residence permit (it’s a 90 day wait as a non EU citizen and I’m at least 30 days in) so I can enrol and start learning too.

Do you have questions about life in Denmark? Let me know in the comments. Or maybe you have a story about moving to another country and how it shaped your future? I would love to hear it.

Ciao for now,

Olivia

We’ve officially been living in Denmark for over a month now! While it feels like we’ve never been busier, working out how to do life here and the endless tasks that come with moving house, I must admit that life feels calmer here. Less stressful. Quieter. Dare I say, easier.

Last time I wrote, I was feeling really homesick for Italy. But I’m happy to report that the dust has settled and I’m feeling really good about Aarhus and Denmark once again.

We made some big bounds and leaps this week including crossing the fourth wall. We scored our very first social invite to Friday afternoon beers at a real Danish person’s house!

I connected with so many lovely people on Instagram when I announced we were moving and after going for coffee a few weeks ago with one of these women, she invited us round to meet her husband, daughters and participate in the Danish ritual of Friday beers to celebrate the end of the week.

Andrea and I were like excited school kids and packed a couple of special Italian beers that we brought over from our Campagna Amica Market in Rome, as well as a packet of salt and vinegar chips. More on that in a second.

It was so wonderful to step inside a Danish family home and we got the grand tour. They live in an independent house in a little neighborhood about a half hour walk from our inner city apartment living setup. They even have a garden! There’s steep stairs a-la-Netherlands style in Denmark homes too and you can only imagine their cosy lighting setup.

It’s no secret that my drinking habits really changed when I moved to Italy. In Italy, the drinking culture is very different to Australia. People aren’t drinking to get drunk, and anyway, it’s kind of embarrassing if you are drunk (bella figura and all of that).

Drinking on an empty stomach in Italy is also totally unheard of. And honestly, this was a revelation - drinking is so much better when paired with delicious snacks like olives, taralli, cheese, even just a few chips.

And then obviously, I’ve also had a baby in the past year. So when Andrea and I do aperitivo at home we normally share one beer between us. This long and boring story is relevant and hopefully will give you a laugh because we decided to bring 4 beers to our new friends’ house, assuming that they’d probably have 4 at their house and that would be more than enough….

Let’s just say that we need to cater for Australian-style drinkers in Denmark and not Italian ones in future. We must have seemed like the stingiest guests with our four (albeit artisanal) meager beer offering!

Oh and that packet of chips? I was itching to open them up from the first clink of our glasses but they were popped open just at the very end.

As soon as we’ve got a little more furniture, we can’t wait to have our new friends over for an Italian-style aperitivo.

Other revelations this week: Sometimes a negative can actually turn into a positive. Take this week when I rocked up to the library with my daughter to meet her babysitter and realised I had forgot my laptop at home. A whole 30 minutes away…Luckily my husband was working from home, so I left her with the babysitter and we met halfway. Andrea and I have had zero alone time since we moved. We’re tired, a bit cranky, and it’s just a lot parenting, let alone moving countries without any real help. He got 5 steps back up the road before I yelled out to him ‘Fancy a coffee?’ Of course he did.

We went to the most hygge of all places (called OS) we’ve been in Aarhus so far. This little cafè down a little lane full of flickering candles, wooden tables and pretty plants. A place that just screamed relax and romance. It’s the first time we’ve been for a solo coffee date since I was pregnant (don’t worry, we have had a few dinners out in the last year, albeit few and far between). It literally made our entire week, so I invite you to see what positives you can make happen from any little mishaps for yourself this week.

Our next happy discovery this week was thanks to a video I saw of an Australian who has moved to Copenhagen to become a baker. You need to find this brand of chocolate below, get really good butter and sourdough bread. It’s about a million times better than Nutella and I am hooked!

And speaking of chocolate, we are gearing up to Easter here. It’s a big holiday break in Denmark that starts from ‘Maudy’ Thursday and runs until Monday. It always surprised me living in Italy that Good Friday was never a public holiday. Well here it is! At our market shop this weekend, we met a specialty chocolatier (Nikolai) and of course indulged in some of his eggs filled with delicious fillings. So far we’ve tried marzipan and a zingy lemon one. We’ve secured the leg of lamb from our Swiss lamb butcher too and are looking forward to getting out and doing a few touristy things around our new town finally.

Next week, our Umbrian mattress is finally due to arrive and we can officially say arrivederci to the sofa bed we’ve been sleeping on. In true Italian fashion, we decided to order our favorite mattress ever (the ones they use at our friends’ agriturismo La Cuccagna) well before we moved. The delivery was running late (surprise surprise) so they said they could deliver direct to the depot where the rest of our furniture was being kept before it transferred to Denmark. To cut a long and boring story short, the mattress went missing around Rome before it made its way to our friends’ agriturismo and then they shipped it to Denmark for us instead!

I hope to have lots of exciting things to share with you next time, but until then hej hej and buona pasqua!

Liv x

PS - I’ve been so enjoying sharing my reflections about moving to Denmark. But it also makes me wish I did this when I moved to Italy. So I’m thinking about a monthly series looking back at different episodes from moving to Italy. Would you be interested? I was there nearly 7 years so I certainly have stories to share! Let me know in the comments if this is something you would read.

Today, Denmark goes to the polls for the general election. It’s an important one and we are watching closely to see what happens. There are some absolutely crazy policies being proposed by some hard-right parties (including reviewing the last 20 years’ worth of citizenship awarded to Danes and making them resit a test and be hauled in and interviewed by the police!)

And yesterday we got a taste of just the kind of people these parties are appealing to for ourselves. A rep from the company we are renting our apartment from came for the house inspection. Dressed all in black like some kind of giant ninja, he entered the house and we offered him water or coffee. To which he replied ‘So in Danish or English’?

After explaining our Danish was non-existent having just moved (with assurances that we are signed up for a course) he stared blankly and basically said let’s just get on with it then.

The visit ended with my husband leaving his phone number for a technician to come and fix something in the house. ‘I’ll leave my name too - it’s Andrea’ To which our new friend replied like a petulant 5 year old might, ‘That’s a girl’s name you know’.

We can’t expect everyone to welcome us with open arms my husband told me. And I guess he’s right. But it’s another thing to experience it firsthand.

So here’s some notes from my journal about life in Denmark so far. I hope you are enjoying following along. I’m certainly enjoying writing about it in any case!

This week was a hard one. I try to explain to Andrea what I feel. That I went from living my dream to a different, new kind of reality in an instant. Italy wasn’t perfect. It was far from it. It gave me so many headaches, tears, frustration. Things never made sense and I learnt to stop asking why things were the way they were. They just were.

But as much as the streets lined with dog poop that got on the wheels of Sofia’s pram annoyed me and the cars that nearly ran us over on a daily basis made me see red, it was still my dream and I guess I took a certain kind of joy from that every day. Even on the hard days, there I was, the girl from Melbourne without an ounce of Italian blood in her veins who had picked up and left at 25 and done the impossible. Made it work in Italy - in Rome of all places. The eternal city.

And now here I was, a new-ish mum struggling with her identity and all the changes that motherhood had brought in a completely foreign country where everything was new, where we were all by ourselves, and where I was no longer living the dream I had made happen at 25. We’d wanted to move north for opportunities for us too, but of course, having a child was a big motivator.

So I guess the two things confounded this week. This sense that I was no longer living my dream and my new identity as a mother was somehow partly to blame.

This week was not all bad despite my musing on life not lived in Italy though. I met a wonderful Danish woman for coffee and cardamom buns. She even came around to our home that evening and dropped off some hand-me-downs from her older daughters. I also went to the market with my new English friend Jodie, her daughter and mine. We basked in the sun afterwards and enjoyed our coffee together.

I even have the sweet lamb farmer (she also sells cheese!) at the market on speed-dial. I text her on Friday, remembering I was meant to pre-order any lamb we might want before the weekend. Klaudia called straight away and we bonded over the fact that my Italian husband would appreciate me ordering an abbacchio or suckling lamb shoulder from her (spoiler alert - he did!)

In happy news as promised in a previous Substack, we knocked on all of our neighbors doors and offered them home-baked banana bread. We met some real characters and I think we have started off on the right foot with the Danes who live here!

Next door are a gorgeous couple more or less the same age with a three month old. We’ve made plans to have them over for coffee as soon as we have some more furniture. Downstairs are three young 19 year old girls in a share house and above us are their male counterparts. Another level down are my favorite neighbours Tina (my mother in law’s age and a nonna herself) and Lars (loves Australia, all-round nice guy). In the attic there’s a final year med student who was hosting a supper club with her two friends and super bubbly and friendly. And we even met one of our neighbours just in his bath towel!

I guess I should be careful for what I wish for too because it seems I just may be heading back to Rome sooner than expected for the beginning of a medical procedure that I’ve been on the waitlist for a long while for. Unfortunately I can’t do the pre-hospitalisation bloods and ECG anywhere other than Rome, so a couple trips back seem to be in my future.

So this is my musing from the end of our third week living in Denmark. I think it’s important to show you that moving abroad is not always the glamorous and exciting thing to do, but often layered and hard.

This week, I want to focus on the joy my family brings me. The fact that we are so lucky to have these life opportunities. And to just enjoy the journey and not get so hung up on the destination - we do not know where we will land and which new dreams are being thought up right now. And that’s exciting too.

I have realised I incorrectly used ‘hej’ in my last email after a chat with a lovely Danish barista during the week. She informed me that ‘hej’ means ‘hello’ and ‘hej hej’ means goodbye (the informal way at least). So the more you know! In fact, the government offers all foreigners a Danish language course that takes you up to B2 or intermediate level which is pretty amazing.

We have been in Denmark for about 2.5 weeks now and time is flying. It feels like we have been gone from Italy for months as we have done so much in such a short time and have had a lot to take in!

I wanted to write to you this week to talk about the little community that is opening itself up to us. This week I have felt so hopeful and joyful that we are going to be very happy here in Aarhus. Moving into our own apartment helps, but it’s the people who make a place as they say, and I am quite quickly falling for our little neighborhood.

So here’s a chapter from my journal all about the wonderful locals we have met so far.

No sooner have we entered the open air market than the fishmonger is yelling out to me in Danish. He proudly presents a sort of fish pancake and offers it to Sofia. I’m not even buying fish, I was just walking by and it brings a huge smile to my face because I feel like I’m back in Rome for a moment.

I walk into our by-now favourite bakery Berta Bageri and ask the woman behind the counter if they make sandwiches. At her reply I ask ‘are you Australian?!’ She tells me she’s from Sydney and that Denmark has totally stolen her heart. Not just Denmark but Aarhus itself. She’s lived in Norway and France before but she keeps coming back to Aarhus and she assures me we are going to love it here too.

My husband and I keep joking that we took a little piece of Rome with us… our daughter! She is a true Roman child. Loud, extremely friendly and full of confidence. She has befriended just about all the women over 60 in our neighbourhood and has the Danes eating out of the palm of her little hand as they help her cross the road and let her play with their bikes.

The next local I meet is a parking inspector from Manchester who’s been living here the last 25 years. He came for a holiday, met his wife and never left! He tells me that he thinks it’s a better city than Copenhagen to live in because it’s small - just 300,000 people and easy to manage.

My husband started his job this week and he is getting the full Danish experience. His first day is a baptism by fire and involves a big dinner out with his department - of course all on the same day that we have to move into our new apartment!

Our furniture arrived on Friday and in between the million boxes that the young guys haul up the four flights of stairs (yes no elevator!) we meet our next door neighbours. They’re a lovely young Danish couple with a 3-month-old baby. We offer to have them over for coffee just as soon as we are set up.

Do you believe in signs? I think I do, especially after discovering that a little Italian specialty shop is literally across the road from our new apartment. I mean, what are the odds?! I dragged Andrea inside today to see if the owner is Italian and scope out their offer. We were pleasantly surprised to meet the wonderful Caterina who works there on a Thursday and is totally fluent after 13 years living in Florence. We tried their assembly of Abruzzese olive oil (delicious) and it already feels like home!

In fact a few days later we are walking down the street and hear someone shout out ‘Ciao’ to us. We look around in confusion and there is Caterina with her very happy, rowdy dog ‘Eros’ who bolts towards us and jumps straight on top of me - almost bowling me over. I joke that he seems like a real Italian dog, until we realise he actually is - straight from Puglia!

The signs keep continuing as Andrea’s parents send us some news articles about Aarhus in Italian. It’s just become a sister city with Cuneo - a town in Piedmont no less where Andrea’s family have their roots! What are the chances?!

The next local in our neighbourhood is the fantastic hairdresser/vintage furniture seller that I wrote about last time. We popped in this afternoon and were delighted to find our very first Danish design piece of furniture. A beautiful desk from Wedowood. She’s now on the hunt for a dining room table for us and we look forward to seeing what she finds!

We pop into the market on Saturday to buy some fish. Our fishmonger can’t remember the name of the fish we enquire about in English and Google Translate’s version (Scaly Tusks) doesn’t sound quite right either. So he takes some fillets, wraps them in paper and tells us to take them home and cook them and come back next time to tell him how they were. ‘We have to pay you though’ I exclaim. But he’s unworried - if you like it, you’ll come back he tells us!

And to round out our weekend, we catch up for breakfast at the home of our brand new friends who we met during our first week. It isn’t easy making friends as adults in a foreign country and we are suitably pretty pleased with ourselves for already having some friends to hang out with just two weeks into our new adventure in Denmark.

This week has reminded me that there are warm, kind-hearted people everywhere. And that’s something worth remembering.

This week we will hopefully find some more furniture for our apartment (it’s the nicest place that Andrea and I have ever lived together, we are in love with it!). We are trying out some babysitters for our daughter while we wait for her to be accepted into a nursery (probably not for 3 months, let’s see). And if I manage, I am going to bake some cupcakes to offer our neighbours and introduce ourselves properly.

So here goes - let’s dive into week 3 of life in Denmark. It’s been the most pleasant surprise so far and I am looking forward to seeing what this week has to offer.

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I’ve decided to start journaling about our experience living in Denmark. I wish I had done that when I moved to Italy, but now I have a wonderful opportunity to do it from scratch in Denmark.

I love reading about people who move to a foreign country and change their lives for a year or more. (Michelle Damiani’s book Il Bel Centro always sticks with me - she moved her family to Umbria for a year!) Maybe you do too? When I shared on Instagram and here on Substack that we were moving to Denmark, I heard from so many people who were interested in hearing how it went. So, I’d like to share regularly about our transition from la dolce vita to the land of hygge.

Do let me know if you have questions, comments, tips or your own story to share. It’s always more fun when Substack becomes a conversation rather than just a monologue I think.

We’ve been in Denmark for just over a week and what a whirlwind it has been. After visiting Aarhus for the first time in January when it was cold, dark and miserable, I honestly wasn’t expecting much….Instead, this first week has greeted us with the most amazing blue skies and sunshine that it honestly feels as if we are in a different city!

We stayed in the most non-baby-friendly Airbnb - clearly a Danish bachelor pad with breakable valuables everywhere! Parquet flooring in the kitchen that stains as soon as a drop of oil (let alone Sofia’s baby food) spills.

On Tuesday we went and visited the first nursery for Sofia. Just like the nido that Andrea went to as a kid (literally the same name!) except world’s apart. He keeps telling me he wishes he was a kid in Denmark. So much fun, so much play - even in the rain and the mud.

We met another international couple with a tiny 3 month old during the visit and hit it off so much so that we exchange phone numbers and scored our very first coffee date within exactly 1 week of arriving! We are both feeling very proud of ourselves.

The highlights this week besides our coffee date, have been discovering the gorgeous bi-weekly market in our neighborhood - it’s the only one in town, and it’s been such a delight chatting to the vendors and discovering Danish produce. I’ve introduced Andrea to ‘swedes’ and ‘parsnips’ and the Danes have introduced us both to this tasty apple jelly like product that they use with cheese, with meat, on roast vegetables. The cheese man knows us almost by name as we are there twice a week hah! As does the apple juice woman.

The next best thing is of course the bakeries - the sourdough bread and the pastries are out of this world good. I loved cardamom scrolls on our honeymoon but I’ve now discovered lime buns - who knew! The coffee is also next level artisanal - and you’d hope so for the outrageous high price. And it’s really true what they say. When you are surrounded by nice things, you actually do feel good. This neighborhood is so aesthetically pleasing - the architecture feels so Danish. It’s very early 1900s style with turrets and towers and pretty roofs. Everything is clean - no dog poop or rubbish in sight here - Rome could never! And we keep looking at pedestrian crossings with hesitation only for cas to slow and stop ages before we even plan on crossing the road.

Basically everything here feels safe, tranquil, easy and ultimately relaxing. Things work as they should.

Much hilarity ensued when we realised that Danes do a very interesting thing when they move out…they take their lights with them. And not just the light bulbs and the fixtures, but all the cables and wiring too! After joking that we would be going around by candlelight in our new apartment, it was with a big sigh of relief that we have discovered they have left us with kitchen and bathroom lights!

And speaking of lights, they are obsessed with candles. It’s all about hygge. It feels so cosy and romantic and whether you use electric or real candles, there is something so special about lighting them around the house. It feels instantly soothing.

The Danes don’t really use curtains either, so it means we’ve been able to live vicariously through other people’s homes and peeking in on their interior design has become a new favorite pastime. We joke that we need to Google lens some light fixtures through their windows whenever we see something we like!

The other thing Danes don’t use are clothing as Andrea found out while looking in on a window tonight - as ‘Hans’ said to us, the Danes figure if you’ve got it, flaunt it!

Another thing we’ve got to live for ourselves this week is leaving Sofia outside in her pram to sleep. I don’t know whether it’s the Danish cold air, but Sofia has never slept better than when she’s out for a walk here, all snuggled up in her pram. The best has been going to visit nurseries and at every tour, they proudly show us the outside shed filled to the prim with prams where all the babies sleep! So Danish!

The other thing we didn’t expect was how friendly everyone would be. It might be our smiling happy baby, but so many people have greeted us with kindness. We met a lovely woman and her dog at the start of the week who has lived in the neighborhood for years and we keep bumping into her -whenever we see her, she gives a big wave, stops for a hello and then goes on with her walk.

In Helen Russel’s the Year of Living Danishly, we had read about Danes having a main job and a side hustle and it has been so interesting to see it in real life. It almost feels like we’re playing a ‘spot the Dane’ game based on what we learnt from her book. Our cheesemonger is also a cranial therapist. The hairdresser across the road is also running a vintage furniture store! I love it, because this would never happen in Italy. Just the accounting setup would be impossible even if people wanted to have two vastly different income streams.

The best things in life are often unexpected and that’s how it’s been for me too since moving to Europe back in 2019. The things I didn’t plan for. The moments when I took a jump, a leap of faith, have always proven to be the making of me I guess. Heading to Piedmont was on a complete whim at the encouragement of a girlfriend who said the vendemmia sounded fun. Moving to Turin to stay with the winemaker’s friend afterwards was completely unplanned. Even downloading Tinder and meeting my husband was something I never could have forseen. Getting my dream job building tours also wasn’t something I specifically set out for. And even getting pregnant - a wonderful surprise we discovered a week after our wedding! And perhaps, unexpectdly moving to Aarhus might just have good things in store too.

So, now as we enter our second week in Denmark, what am I hoping for? I can’t wait to move into our apartment tomorrow finally! I’m curious about who our neighbors will be - will we meet the Danish Ettore (alongside his Egyptian husband under house arrest - that’s a story for another day from the Rome archives) and Rossana?! It hardly seems possible. What quirks will we find in our new house and our new neighborhood? Just how long will it take for my residence permit to arrive? Famously my permit in Italy took about a year and a half once! I’m excited to furnish our house, pick our lights and get Sofia on the waiting list for some nurseries. And of course, I’m wondering which pastry will we discover next?!

Ciao for now,

Olivia

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Ciao friends,

This realisation might sound obvious but packing up our lives to move to Denmark has made me really reflect on the last 7 years here.

Life in Italy compared to Australia couldn’t really be any more different. Things are beautiful (so beautiful). Things are slow (so slow). Culture abounds. Everything is old (the joys of the Colosseum but also old apartments). Caffè is king. Great international food can be hard to find…

And a lot of the time things just didn’t make sense. And what I learnt quickly was not to get tangled up in trying to make them make sense with my Australian mindset either.

Fast forward nearly 7 years and I realise I’m not the same person I was when I arrived back in 2019 with a giant suitcase to a family’s home in Bologna. Not speaking the language. Unable to communicate. But utterly enamoured.

And now I’m about to do it all over again. I’m excited, scared, curious, nervous and everything else you can imagine.

As we get ready to move north, I’ve been thinking a lot about the things I’ve learnt through living in Italy and what I want to take with me - not because they’re cute travel reflections, but because I think they’ve changed my outlook on life for the better.

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Food is connection

In Italy, meals aren’t something you fit in between things.
They’re the thing.

Everyone’s always talking about food. You’ll start discussing what you’re having for dinner tomorrow night while you’re eating today’s breakfast.

Being asked for my recipe for what I do with polpette at the market by an older Italian couple was the moment I knew I belonged.

Whether you’re dining in a restaurant or eating around the family table, meals aren’t something you rush. You sit together, enjoy the time to catchup and savor the flavors you’re sharing together. It isn’t just about eating my father-in-law’s famous agnolotti al plin (though it’s delicious). It’s about sharing time, not just food.

Kids are part of daily life

One of the things I love about Italy (especially now I’m a mum) is that kids are part of everything - not tucked away, not scheduled into separate “kid-friendly” moments, but brought along to everything.

Kids come to dinners. They stay up late. They sit at long tables, listening, interrupting, laughing.

Coming from Australia, where children often feel politely separated - activities just for them, child-free weddings, dinners without them- this is something that really aligns with me. Italy reminded me that community doesn’t pause for parenthood. It expands to include it.

Caffè is a ritual, not a transaction

My husband taught me early on that caffè should be ‘caldo, comodo e in compagnia’. Aka coffee here isn’t something you grab on the run. It’s something you pause to enjoy.

It should be caldo - hot.
Comodo - comfortable, without rushing.
And ideally, in compagnia - shared with someone else.

Even a quick espresso at the bar is a sacred ritual. A pause. Caffeine isn’t the point. Being present is.

Slow doesn’t mean lazy

Sometimes things move at snail pace in Italy and I find it really annoying. Being from Australia, I’m used to things happening at lightning speed. But in Italy, a lot of the time things are ‘piano piano’.

I’m all about efficiency but I think the mistake I make is rushing through things like a giant big checklist sometimes. Italy continues to teach me to slow down and leave time to smell the roses. Long lunches. Taking time to speak to shopkeepers instead of just reeling off your shopping list. Chatting to your neighbours even as your to-do list piles up. And of course, never saying no to a coffee break.

Beauty should be part of everyday life

Whether you’re hitting the Colosseum or going for a walk around the block. Being surrounded by beautiful things really does lift you up. My cup is always full after a walk around our neighbourhood in Rome from the way the sunlight hits the cobblestones to walking past an Ancient Roman wall.

The piazza is where life happens

Life here doesn’t happen behind closed doors. Especially when you live in apartments.

People gather in the piazza to walk, to talk, to watch, to sit alongside one another. Teenagers gather. There’s always a group of elderly men shouting at eachother (about football of course!) and I love the real neighborhood watch (seriously the older Italian women who hang out from their windows every afternoon keeping an eye on things). Children run in circles and there is always a soccer game going on. Everyone is welcome from the very young, to the very old.

The piazza is where I instantly feel part of the community. And that’s a beautiful thing. You’re reminded that you’re part of something larger than your own four walls. It’s a simple thing, but something that I love about life here compared to back in Australia.

Traditions don’t survive by accident

I’ve long admired the way Italians carry on time-honoured traditions. Their passion for dressing up in medieval gear. Their dedication to working all through the night to create tapestries made entirely out of flowers once a year.

People make time for traditions that matter: the Infiorata flower festivals where streets become petals; the crowds packed close together for the Festa dei Ceri; the simple Sunday lunch ritual that happens even when nothing else does.

Traditions survive because people choose to carry them on, again and again. And I’m taking that with me - and will build some traditions that our own family will cherish.

If you want to understand the culture, learn the language

I’ve read about earbuds that can translate, but honestly, I think learning a language opens a door to understanding other cultures in a way that translations will never be able to do.

Speaking the language (and you don’t need to be fluent either) allows you to truly connect with people and gives you a way to understand who someone is and important parts of their culture.

I didn’t just learn Italian to get by. I learned it to understand where I was living. And it opened Italy up to me like nothing else.

Colpo d’aria can’t be real… right?

There’s a phrase here called colpo d’aria — literally, “a hit of air.”
It’s the idea that a random gust of wind can make you sick.

I still laugh about it, honestly. But don’t tell my husband! But if it is real… then Denmark and I are going to have some conversations.

Even this little belief offers a lesson: cultures tell different stories to make sense of the world. And being curious rather than dismissive matters.

We don’t need so much to live well

Maybe the biggest thing Italy taught me is that life doesn’t need to revolve around buying things. It’s that ‘quality over quantity’ idea.

Here, people close stores early. Sundays are for family, not business. Lunch breaks are for breaking away from work.

You don’t need a million objects to feel fulfilled. You need time. You need people. You need to bring joy to daily life.

Everything has its moment

Living in Italy taught me to lean into every season - whether that’s the joys of artichokes and fava beans in spring or bursting tomatoes in the height of summer.

You eat what’s in season, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Certain fruits disappear. Dishes change. You don’t expect strawberries in winter or tomatoes that taste like summer year-round.

I always love February in Italy because the bakeries fill with castagnole (little fried dough filled with crema) to mark carnevale season. It makes you appreciate things more because if you wait too long to grab them, they’re gone until next year.

Honestly it makes things matter more because what you’re enjoying now won’t last forever, but on the plus side, something else will arrive in its place.

Italy has taught me so much about life, people and how I want to live. These are just some of the lessons I’m bringing with me to Denmark.

It makes me wonder, what lessons will we learn up north? How will my current rhythms and habits change? What will challenge us and how will we see things differently after living in Denmark?

This is what I love about moving to a new country. The privilege to see and experience a new way of living. Have you lived abroad before? What have been some of the best lessons that experience has given you?

Until next time,

Olivia

How are you? We are just back from a very quick overnight trip to Florence (more on that soon) and gearing up for a very busy few months.

It has been unseasonably warm in Rome (literally 10 degrees higher than average temperatures) so if you are planning to travel to Italy this year, expect it to be warm and remember to plan accordingly. We like to go out first thing in the mornings while it’s still fresh, be home or at the hotel in the middle of the day (the hottest part) and then venture out again in the evenings.

Next week, I’m heading to Sicily for a few days with my friend and colleague Giulia - the host of some of our Untold Italy Tours. We can’t wait to put the final finishing touches on this year’s Eastern Sicily tours. They’re fully sold out for 2024 but we do have spots available if you’d like to join us in 2025.

Are you an Italian Wine Lover?

My partner Andrea and I have a blog all about Italian wine. We’re trying to demystify the often snooty wine world and act as your 101 guide to Italian wine. We’ll help you order wine in Italy with confidence and pick out the very best wine tours you should book on your next trip. Not heading to Italy anytime soon but still love wine? We write about bottles to purchase that you can find in the States and Australia as well as wine clubs to join.

Join our wine lovers list

3 Magical Days in Venice

Last month, we had our Untold Italy team bonding retreat in Venice. Every year we go somewhere fabulous (last year was Rome with Vespa Tours, food tours and the Domus Aurea tour) and I was thrilled when La Serenissima was chosen as this year’s location!

We tried so many wonderful activities, ate in delicious restaurants and stayed at a marvellous hotel, so I thought I’d also share some of the highlights with you in case you’re planning a trip there soon.

Day 1

Stay at Hotel American Dinesan

Get lost in the maze-like calle - my favorite sites during this trip were the incredible hospital building and the church next door where the Doges are buried!

Pop into the Museo Palazzo Grimani

Do eat delicious local food on a food tour - learn all about cicchetti

Day 2

Breakfast at Rosa Salva

Forget the gondola and book a George Clooney-style boat tour on the canals!

Cichetti style lunch at Osteria Al Squero - you can watch the goings on at the gondola repair workshop across the canal!

Enjoy a special meal at Al Covo

Day 3

Head out to the islands on a special winery tour. You’ll get to visit Burano and Murano plus a secret winery.

Read more here

Get lunch at Da Romano on the island Burano.

Feeling inspired by some of these ideas? It was wonderful to be back in Venice and I can’t wait to return sometime soon (admittedly, hopefully when the weather is slightly warmer).

Next time, I’ll share with you some exciting new tours I tried in Florence this week and a wine bar we return to every trip. If you’d like to see what we get up to in Sicily, keep an eye out on my Instagram stories.

Ciao,

Liv x

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in your inboxes as it’s been a really busy start to 2024 between work, play and planning our Italian wedding in June.

However, I wanted to pop in your inboxes to announce some exciting news! I’m now offering Italy itinerary consults via Untold Italy. If you don’t know where to begin with your trip planning, you’re feeling overwhelmed or you simply want some extra suggestions to add the dolce vita to your Italian vacation – this is for you.

Find Out More

Living my best Italian life on tour in Umbria for Untold Italy Tours by Rhianna May

Book in for a 1 hour Zoom call with me where I’ll set you up with a general plan based on your interests, timing and budget or review your current trip plan to make sure it makes sense.

I’ll provide advice on all your trip planning needs – from hotels to accommodation – and share our team’s favorite secret places and activities that will make your trip unique and memorable.

Book Your Itinerary Consult Now

What else has been happening? We went back to Australia at the end of 2023 to celebrate my sister’s wedding and then enjoyed a surprise trip to Paris in January which was a ton of fun. I’ve been busy with Untold Italy Tours planning all of our exciting tours for the year in some new destinations including Liguria, the Dolomites, Southern Tuscany. Our Spring tours are fully booked out now - although we have 2 final places on our Bologna, Modena and Parma tour with local Giulia this May if you’re interested!

We’ve released our 2025 calendar too so if you’re a pre-planner, you can browse the calendar and see if something takes your fancy!

Browse Tour Calendar

Andrea and I have also been busy with Italian Wine Tales (our wine 101 website) with some new guides and podcast episodes on the Winederlust and Untold Italy podcasts. I’ll share the links here in case you’d like to have a listen too.

Wines of Southern Tuscany Podcast

Winederlust Podcast Episode

Next month we are headed to Venice, so stay tuned for more over on my Instagram and expect a newsletter with my top tips.

x Liv

I am finally back in Rome for a hot minute after a month of BUMPER travel. Last month I went for a weekend trip to what my friend Katy has dubbed ‘the other Amalfi Coast’. Aka the Cilento Coast which is just ‘down the road’ from Amalfi and basically unknown amongst western tourists. Keep reading below to find out why I think you should visit in 2024.

In other news, I’ve just finished running back-to-back tours with Untold Italy and wow what an incredible time we had. We wrapped up our week tour of Tuscany where we stay in an agriturismo in Chianti and visit local artisans, organic winemakers, olive oil makers, saffron farms, truffle hunters and more.

Next, I headed to Palermo where our Western Sicily kicks off. It’s the first time we ran this new itinerary and I was thrilled to be able to show our guests a lesser known side of the island compared to its Eastern Greek counterpart. We ate and drank our way along the West Coast but it was the incredible locals we met along the way which will stay with us forever - from farm lunches with an American woman who moved to Sicily 60 years ago and fell in love with a local to pastry lessons at an award winning bakery run by a woman who was given to an orphanage as a child and has now become a local hero- there were just so many incredible people we met.

See West Sicily Tour

And finally, I’m freshly back from my adopted second home of Piedmont after a wonderful 5 day tour of Barolo wine and white truffles. The weather was just perfect for exploring with blue skies and Alp views over the vineyards of a daytime and crisp Fall evenings. The highlight for our guests was the truffle hunt and seeing that incredible relationship between truffle hunter and his trusty dog Buk!

See Piedmont Tour

Why you should visit the Cilento Coast

If you like sandy beaches, a lack of crowds, friendly locals, incredible food and reasonable prices, then you need to consider a trip to Cilento. It’s only a three hour drive south from Rome - and hot tip, you absolutely need a car if you visit.

Read more

How are you? This email is coming to you right at the end of a big month as I’ve just finished leading our group tour in Puglia for Untold Italy.

What a wonderful week of exploring we had with such a fun group of guests from the States and Australia. We welcomed back two guests who joined us on our Sicily tour last year (and this time brought their daughter too); an English couple who moved to Australia 20+ years ago and were celebrating their wedding anniversary; two wonderful friends from Kansas and Florida; and another lovely couple who had so much fun that they booked another tour (this time in Piedmont) with us for next October!

Puglia is one of my favorite destinations in Italy and I’ve written about it extensively on my blog if you’d like to learn more.

Read more

In case you might like to visit Puglia with me, we have very limited spots left for 2024 so get in touch asap. We have just 2 final spots left for May and our September tour is already sold out so we have added another tour the week after in late September.

Find out more

September’s Travel Tip - Visit Ostia Antica

You might have been to Rome many times and have seen many incredible sights. But have you ever ventured just 30 minutes out of town? At the start of the month, we decided to finally make our way to Ostia Antica, the famous Ancient Roman port city ruins and I can’t believe we didn’t make our way there sooner.

Read more

Summer season is still in full swing here in Italy, although temperatures are finally down to a more manageable 30C/86F in Rome. Our week break in Sicily at the end of June feels like a lifetime ago and I’ve sworn off spending July & August in Rome to my partner Andrea about 10 times a day!

If you are only able to visit Italy during the summer, don’t fret. There are some wonderful destinations that I would recommend! Last year we spent a week on the wonderful La Maddalena archipelago in Sardinia and it is true paradise for beach lovers.

So here’s a collection of ideas to help inspire your research for an Italian summer. Next year I’ll hopefully take my own advice - we’ll be in the Umbrian countryside in early June for our wedding and then honeymoon planning in July awaits.

How to spend a week in La Maddalena

I’m not kidding - the water really IS that clear and beautiful. I still think it’s the most stunning waters I’ve ever swam in. When we visited La Maddalena Sardinia last year, it was really difficult to find information online. There’s a few blog posts and outdated magazine articles but that’s about it. With this in mind, I thought it might be helpful to write about our experiences to help you plan a wonderful holiday there. If you’re into a heap of sightseeing, this probably isn’t the right place for you. But if you want to swim at incredible beaches and totally unwind, then I can’t think of a better location.

Read guide

Or why not head to malvasia grape covered Salina in Sicily ?

Read Guide

Or venture to the pretty island of Ponza just a few hours from Rome

Read guide

Or visit wonderful Puglia!

Read guide

Have you discovered our new website Italian Wine Tales?

My partner Andrea and I are studying our Italian Sommelier Course and have launched a website all about Italian Wine. Use it to discover what to drink when you’re holidaying in Italy or what to buy online when you return home. You can sign up to our weekly newsletters for little Italian wine tips here:

Sign up for Italian Wine 101

That’s it for now amici! My Untold Italy Tours partner in crime Katy arrives in town today and we are in for some fun adventures this week so stay tuned for news of that. Corinna (author of the Glam Italia Series) is also in town so a fun Roman dinner awaits us!

Buona settimana,

Liv x

Welcome to my August paid newsletter and thankyou very much for being here - it really means so much that you value my work and hearing from me.

I’m writing to you from a once-again sweltering Rome. Just when I thought we were easing back into manageable temperatures, it’s going to be 39C/102F on Monday! We have some friends coming to stay next week so it may prove to be a bit of a challenge leaving the house. The best thing to do in Rome when the weather is like this is to get up early (say 6/7am) and go for a walk before bunkering back in the house from around 9/10am when it starts to get hot. Or, to go for a midnight walk!

Things have been pretty boring in Rome this month. Traditionally, it’s when all the locals close up shop and go on holidays and I don’t recommend visiting, especially during the week of Ferragosto (15th August) if you can avoid it. Luckily for us, a few things are starting to open up again next week including one of my favorite restaurants nearby (Trattoria Pennestri).

The best things we ate in Piedmont this month

If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen that we made it back to Piedmont for a few days at the start of the month! It was my Piemontese partner Andrea’s first time back home since we moved to Rome and well-overdue. Besides seeing family and many beloved friends, the next best thing was all the delicious food we ate there.

Piedmont would have to be one of my absolute favourite regions for food (and my #1 for wine!) I’ve written pretty extensively on food in Piedmont on my blog but I wanted to let you in on a super local trattoria about a 30 minute drive out of town. It’s the kind of place you go for an unpretentious lunch with friends. Where you can indulge in all the Piemontese classic dishes like vitello tonnato, insalata russa, carne cruda and a ton more. Where you can eat pizza with lard and freshly shaved black truffles over the top and the bill will come to around 20-30 euros a head. It’s actually the restaurant where Andrea used to work while he was finishing his university degree.

Read more

How are you all? Here in Rome we are still sweltering through the summer with temperatures back up to 36C/97F this week. It’s a little draining and I must admit, I’m looking forward to September arriving and getting excited about all the wonderful tours I’ll be leading this Fall/Autumn (Puglia, West Sicily, Piedmont, Tuscany and Umbria!)

Last week we ventured back to Piedmont for the week and it was lovely to be surrounded with our friends and family there. If you’re signed up to my paid newsletters look out in your inbox next week for some new delicious discoveries there.

In the spirit of getting ready for my first tour of the upcoming season, I wanted to take you on a virtual journey there too. So come with me in this newsletter to wonderful Puglia!

7 Reasons you need to Visit Lecce

Strolling atop a polished limestone road, gazing in wonder at the spectacular baroque palazzi and church upon church (upon yet another church), my first impressions of Lecce are that I have gone back in-time. The colors are all white and golden thanks to the soft, malleable limestone that quite literally everything is made out of here. All set across a vibrant blue sky with not a cloud to be seen, and pops of violet jacaranda flowers.

Read my guide to Lecce

The Best Places to Stay in Puglia

From the olive tree-hewn countryside in the Valle d’Itria to the whitewashed hilltop towns that overlook dramatic coastline, Puglia is one of my favorite regions. Some of the best towns to stay in Puglia in my opinion include:

• Locorotondo: a beautiful whitewashed town in the Valle d’Itria with cheese farms and trulli houses

• Martina Franca: the Baroque ‘capital’ of the Itria Valley

• Monopoli: a fishing village on the Adriatic Sea

• Lecce: the beautiful capital of the ‘Salento’ or Southern part of Puglia

• Ostuni: the most famous of the whitewashed hilltop towns

Find Out More

Want to visit Puglia with me in 2024?

Our 2023 September tour is sold out but we are running 3 new tours there next year (one in May and two in September!) We had some filmmaking friends come on tour with us this Spring and they’ve made a wonderful behind the scenes look at what happens on tour with us in case you’re curious.

Find out more

That’s it for now! We have friends from Australia visiting us next week in Rome for a few days so I’m looking forward to playing tour guide in our adopted home town. Rooftop aperitivo and dinner in one of our favorite trattoria’s is on the cards!

Buona settimana,

Liv x