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“I came to Italy expecting adventure. What I never anticipated is the absolute sweet joy of everyday life—la dolce vita.”

WITH VIVID WRITING THAT CAPTURES sensual moment by moment details, Frances Mayes has turned readers all over the world on to the joys of life in Italy. For any of you who missed it, she’s the author of Under the Tuscan Sun and six bestsellers.

Her books have taken me along with her—hacking away at weeds in her Cortona garden, discovering Saturnia’s thermal springs, and temples in Sicily. It’s engrossing writing that gets me daydreaming about my next trip. Plus her recipes are wonderful.

Always, she connects the experience of her outer journey to the fascinating, ever-changing inward journey. “In Italy you can find the place that corresponds to your soul more easily than any other place in the world,” she says.

Frances first traveled to Italy after studying its art and architecture in college. She remembers landing in Bologna one autumn morning:

“It was staggering. I was sitting under one of those big arcades…all around there were people drinking coffee and smoking, and I remember thinking…Ah! this is really fun. That’s when I started getting intrigued by the vivacity of the Italians. I have that great attraction us pale-faced people have to it, like a moth to a light bulb.”

That great attraction led Frances to find her “soul” place: rural Tuscany. As much as I love reading about her life there in Cortona, I also get thrilled by her writing when she takes off to explore other parts of Italy. She brings such a great spirit of whimsy, curiosity, and passion to her traveling. With her husband Ed, Frances continues to discover Italian treasures, up and down the boot.

“When we think of the Italian coast, most travelers go to the Mediterranean, but we’ve been enjoying the Adriatic, and have loved spending time in Senigalia,” she said to me in an interview. This seaside town in Le Marche is a popular spot for Italian tourists, with a wide, white sandy beach and grand Liberty-style architecture in its historic center. On Thursdays, there’s a big market that takes over the central vias—a tradition that harkens back to the thirteenth century when Senigalia’s trade fair attracted crowds from all over Europe. “And the fish restaurants are extraordinary,” Frances added, “from shacks on the beach where you eat with the locals to the more elegant Uliassi (www.uliassi.it) and Madonnina del Pescatore (www.morenocedroni.it), which both have Michelin-starred chefs.”

Frances and Ed also keep going back to Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the northeastern region that’s world-renowned for its wines. “It’s a beautiful junction of Slavic, Austrian, and Italian culture,” she said. “You can visit so many small towns by car, including Cormons, and discover small wineries where you just pull up to a vineyard, and out comes the owner to show you around, then you sit under a pergola for wine tastings.”

“Now for women traveling solo, I would always go back to Venice,” is her advice. “You can just wander around on your own steam, completely relaxed, though of course you’ll get lost!”

I could feel her poet’s soul through the phone line as she told me about her springtime stay on the Venetian island of Torcello: “After the last ferry left, we had the whole island to ourselves, it got so quiet, stars came out, and we could walk all over in the silence…”