Slice of Life in Chianti... with Cats! July 2026

Today we’re talking about our life here in Chianti, where we’ve moved for two weeks… with our cats!

Among other things, you’ll hear about…:

-  Our special guest from Nashville 

- How Hoover became a thief this week

- what’s the best dish we've had since we have been up here in Chianti.

We talk about traveling in Chianti, and traveling in general; and we discuss how to get the most out of your travel experiences.

Want to know more about us and our travel services? Find us at: 

www.LittleRoadsEurope.com

www.facebook.com/LittleRoadsEurope

We craft small-town driving itineraries for travelers to Italy, Ireland and Scotland.

And our "alter-egos" as musicians:

www.OrsiniVirtuosi.it

Transcript

A Slice of Life in Chianti podcast notes

Note: This is not a complete transcript, but rather the show notes we write in advance to prepare for the episode. 

INTRO: 

Welcome to Little Roads Unfiltered: Italy and Beyond

Today we’re talking about our life here in Chianti, where we’ve moved for two weeks… with our cats!

Among other things, you’ll hear about…:

-  Our special guest from Nashville 

- How Hoover became a thief this week

- what’s the best dish we've had since we have been here

[music up then down to 20%]

This is Matt Walker          …and I’m Zeneba Bowers - 

We’re recording while sitting outside at our rental property in Chianti... 

“ … we’ll be talking about moving up to Chianti for two weeks with our cats, in today’s chat - here on Little Roads Unfiltered: Italy and Beyond.”

[Music up then fade out]

For those of you who don’t know us: We are professional musicians and also travel writers and consultants, living and working here in Italy for going on SEVEN years now. 

If you want to learn more about us and our lives, you can find us on our website LittleRoadsEurope..com, on our socials, and here on this podcast, which we’re going to do unedited, as if you’re sitting here chatting with us - 

…and by the way, the intro music ecc ecc — 

So let’s get to talking about our two weeks here in Chianti!

Went shopping right away when we arrived

Coop grocery store - VERY expensive prices (compared to where we live), all geared towards tourists

Little fruit stand next door - also expensive, but farm to table from her own gardens

Anecdote of old guy that we let ahead of us, he’s old time Grevegiani, he had 4 items - took same time for us to bag 30 items, rode down the elevator together - we asked him if the town had changed a lot from his youth: “E cambiato molto qui?” “Ahhh, porca miseria!”

This was a cheaper, almost poor area 50-100 years ago, not an expensive place to live 

*** 

[We wrote FB post about misting machine at bar - a few people got really mean in response] 

Women in car jamming up the traffic in (Montefioralle)

Very stressful for her - we managed to reverse back and extricate ourselves

Frankly it is amazing that some of these roads have cars on them at all

Later we saw she had parked in a ZTL, so she’ll probably get a whopping ticket 

Moral of story: Worth it to look up some driving rules and standards. Although to be fair, this was just a plain old red light. I think she just didn’t feel like waiting and didn’t know that the road narrowed so much

***

— “ADVERTISEMENT” BREAK —

That reminds me that we need to stop for a word from our sponsor - - - - 

- - - just kidding, we don’t have any sponsors - and we’re not looking for any either, we want to keep this an ad-free show.

So today’s show is brought to you by: A Good Idea. 

And today’s Good Idea is: 

Google a few blogs about driving before you visit a place you have never driven before. All of our clients tell us they are scared of driving if they haven’t been to Europe before, but there is really nothing to be afraid of. You can do a little reading, and looking on Google Earth, to see what you will find in advance. 

_______________________

That’s it!

… So anyway, where were we?

Colleageue from Nashville visiting, NSO gossip

CATS: We needed to research “intruder mode” for our cat feeders, they always try to find a way to make things difficult

ONION SOUP 

“She acts like she's the rich one, and she's not.”

Tell people if you can't make your reservation. If you don't hire a travel planner, you can still call and they will probably understand you even if you speak in English. But if they don't, at least you tried…. Or you can ask someone at your hotel to help you. Anything is better than just not showing up. It's really a big deal here 

How is this different than our regular lives? 

No gigs, not chained to a computer, much less cooking (came up here with some pre-made things). Been to this area so many times we have eaten in almost every restaurant here, many multiple times, don’t really need research trips up here anymore. Took the unusual step to move our gigs to other seasons and stay here

OUTRO: 

I think that’s a good place to wrap it up here - we hope you enjoyed joining us for this Chianti chat !

If you enjoyed what you’ve heard, please give us a like or a good rating on your favorite platform, and tell your friend about us…

And don't forget our “Ask us anything”, where you can send us questions and we’ll answer them in a later episode.

We talk about a wide variety of topics here on this podcast, from travel tips to slice-of-life stories - we’ll post a new episode every Tuesday. 

So catch us next time - we’ll see you down the Little Roads… CIAO!