This is a story about what it’s like to fall in love with Tuscany in your mid-life years, to buy a home there, to change around your work, and, finally, to leave the San Francisco Bay Area and move with your wife and children to a tiny Tuscan village. That’s the first part. The second part tries to share what it’s like living here once you’ve made the move: learning the language, becoming part of a village community, running a tour company, understanding the political scene, getting an internet connection, enjoying Renaissance art, spending time in the hospital, appreciating the bureaucracy, and enduring customer service at The Phone Company.

I’ve tried to write it all in a way that will make you feel like an honored guest invited into the cockpit as we transfer from America to Tuscany and set up shop. And, in case you’re wondering what kind of crazy person does such a thing, and whether you might be one, I try to share enough personal history and detail about our lives on both sides of the ocean to satisfy your curiosity.

As a foreigner who enters into another culture, there’s a limited window of time available to you to see these things and to try to record them in some way. You have to become Italian enough to play the game, but not so Italian yet that it all becomes invisible. If you wait too long, you are no longer in a position to reflect or comment on cultural differences because what people are doing seems totally normal to you.

Ripeness is all, as the poet said, and hopefully I’ve managed to capture for you some of the subtler aspects of living here that travel photos, even high resolution ones, can never reveal.