A Thousand Days In Venice

When Fernando spots her in a Venice cafe and knows immediately that she is The One, Marlena de Blasi is caught off guard. A divorced American woman travelling through Italy, she thought she was satisfied with her life. Yet within a few months, she has left her job as a chef, sold her house, kissed her two grown-up kids goodbye and moved to Venice. Once there, she finds herself sitting in sugar-scented pasticcerie, strolling through 16th-century palazzi, renovating an apartment overlooking the seductive Adriatic Sea and preparing to wed a virtual stranger in an ancient stone church.;As this transplanted American learns the hard way about the peculiarities of Venetian culture, we are treated to an honest, often comic view of how two middle-aged people, both set in their ways but also set on being together, build a life. The book is filled with the foods and flavours of Italy and peppered with recipes and culinary observations. But the main course is about a woman who falls in love with both a man and a city, and finally finds the home she didn't know she was missing.