Mimi Torchia Boothby

Category: travel journal

  • La Giara – Sersale

    This is a scene from a large house in Sersale that appears to be abandoned. Two years ago, my cousin Peppino Talarico told me that the Talarico family owned this house many years ago. During my latest visit, my tour guides let me peek inside. How lucky could I get? There was this amazing jar…

  • Piazza Carmela Borelli – Sersale

    When a town is over 500 years old, I guess it makes sense for them to be inordinately proud of their uniqueness. Sersale is so proud of this tree, they put it on their coat of arms. During the summer, this tree casts a great deep shadow which cools almost half the piazza. The tree…

  • September in Italy

    For me, Italy is a wonderland full of beautiful landscapes, friends, relatives, and good food. Add to that a serious amount of culture; as in 1000 year old churches and glittering museums on every street corner, well, almost. I found a little bit of all of this on my last visit. I have almost filled…

  • U is for Urchin

    The last wild creature we discovered on our January Hawaiian vacation was the Helmet Urchin. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at when we saw these creatures, that looked like giant nail heads on rock in the coastal rock formations on the beach in Kona. Are those animals? Or some sort of extinct…

  • Healing plants of Hawaii

    A lot of you know that my husband spent nearly 2 months in the hospital, with the resultant weight loss and weakness from the length of time he was there. He was home for almost a month with no appreciable weight gain when we left for a week of sun in Hawaii. We stayed in…