A Traveler at Heart
Traveling and a sense of wanderlust have always played an important role in my life, starting when I was three when my family brought me to France for the first time.
When I was 13, I flew all the way across the Ocean and started exploring Brazil and when I was 14, I traveled across Italy and to France by night train. By the time I was 19, right after high school, I was ready to take off on my own and move to Rome from Sardinia to attend university.
Fast forward five years and I set off again, this time to explore Europe: I moved to Dublin where I stayed for two years and then London for the next two to take a second MA in International Relations. But that wasn’t enough and I felt ready to take off again. This time, far from my comfort zone, en route to Asia and the Middle East.
This is how I landed in places like China, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Singapore, Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan, and the UAE. Always alternating European destinations and a few jaunts to Brazil.
Travel writer first
When I graduated in Journalism, my ideal job was writing about politics, better foreign affairs but also domestic. However, I quickly understood that to deal with daily political events I needed a stronger stomach and naturally, I started travel writing.
This was well over a decade ago and I never looked back. My travel writing touches on all the aspects of a society, whether it’s its history, cuisine, or darker sides. Putting into words what I was seeing was always my ideal job and in travel writing, I found what I was looking for.
My work has been published in several international outlets including TimeOut, National Geographic Traveler, Global Times, Forbes Travel, New York Post, Al Monitor, GoNomad, Literary Traveler, and more. I co-authored two Lonely Planet books and was interviewed by magazines, newspapers, and TV around the world.
But that’s not all. Along with writing for international outlets, I managed and actively updated my own travel websites, initially one devoted to my international travels (Chasing the Unexpected) and one to Rome (Rome Actually), my beloved second home.
Why travel designer?
My travel blogs, which were launched to be a chronicle of my travels, have gradually turned into detailed resource websites to help travelers plan their trips and make the most out of their stays in different destinations. After the first two, I also launched Fearlessly Italy, devoted to the country as a whole, and Sardinia Revealed, my birthplace.
I have always enjoyed revealing hidden aspects of a society that were hardly covered by the mainstream media, lesser-known places, and little details that never made it to the larger outlets but that I thought worthy of sharing to increase the chance of a better experience.
After years of traveling around the world, I realized I was missing Italy always more. Eventually, probably even as the outcome of an unintentional self-epiphany, I felt the urge to settle back to Rome and start exploring my country, Italy, through the eyes of an international traveler and the insight of a local.
This gives me a privileged point of view because I can understand what foreign visitors go through while out of their comfort zone but at the same time, I hold the in-depth knowledge only locals access to.
Anyone can eat pizza, and anyone can stare at a sculpture or take a walk in a narrow alley. But locals grow up soaking in the details. And this is how we notice the little plate mentioning an important event that happened four centuries ago, the coat of arms belonging to an old noble family, the trattoria that has been cooking and serving according to tradition for a century.
I feel always more that tourists only see the surface of our cities and towns, without even understanding or appreciating them the way they deserve. So here I am, on a mission to show Italy as it is, beautiful, charming, loud, seductive. As they call it in Afghanistan referring to its grace, “the bride of the world”.
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