Our Story

Here are some insights into who we are, why we picked up and moved to Italy without jobs, and why we chose Turin as our adopted home.

Ciao!

Benvenuti! Welcome! Thanks for joining along on our family’s avventura in Italy. We hope our stories help you with your own adventures.

Here’s some background on who we are and why we decided to go on this avventura:

What’s the Point of All This?

If you’ve come looking for the answers to life’s big questions, keep searching, but if you want to get our perspective on enjoying life while you have it then Welcome to The Avventura! Thank you for tagging along with our family on our adventure – or ‘avventura’ as they say in Italian. We are Team Lewin, an American family from Chicago (and Philadelphia before that) now living in Turin, Italy. We want this to be a resource for people thinking of living the expat experience in Italy or elsewhere, as well as to get recommendations on great spots to visit around the world. We love eating and drinking, learning about other cultures, the great outdoors, and animals. And aside from the occasional whining and craziness, we love doing all of those as a family. Read our stories and ask questions, we are here to help you get the most out of your avventura!

Who Is Team Lewin?

Ciao! I’m Dave. My dream is to have a taco/beer/gelato truck, but for now I’m living it up as a statistician when I’m not planning our next family trip or writing for this site. I love all things food and alcohol related, luckily I also love playing basketball and hiking with the dogs so I stay somewhat in shape.

Ciao! Sono Lynn, la mamma di Ali, Kai e Joy … which is the way I have introduced myself over the last year. I am a second-career veterinarian (was an engineer in my first life) and I truly love my field of work. It was a very difficult decision for me to leave that life behind for a few years while we embark on this journey. This experience for me is about never missing those “big” moments in my kid’s lives, knowing what goes on with them each and every day, getting to cook for them and clean up after them, and just trying to be mindful and present. My secondary goal is to develop some patience…I’ll keep you updated on that. In keeping consistent with the theme, I of course love food, wine, travel and dogs.

Ciao a tutti, sono Ali (oppure Alison perché nessun italiano può pronunciare Ali)! Hi everyone, I’m Ali (or Alison because no Italian can pronounce Ali)! I am 13 years old and well, as you know, I live in Italy. I had a really hard time leaving Chicago, it was basically the only home that I had ever known (unless you count moving at 2 years old from Philadelphia). My loves include: dogs, soccer, traveling, math and spending time with my family and friends. I also love baking and moving to Italy was perfect for this. I have learned how to make homemade pasta and I have really put my baking skills to the test with the amount of sweets I have been making (I have been baking for my classes and soccer teams for any excuse!). The first year here I was attending the International School of Turin (IST). I met people from around the world and with different cultures. I made some amazing friends that I will never forget. The second year here I am attending an international public school (Spinelli). This means that most of the kids there have a multicultural background, the school is only in Italian besides my English and German classes. My teachers and classmates are so nice and have been helping me so much. The school is a little bit disorganized (as to be expected considering it’s Italian) but hey, it’s all part of the experience.

Hello to everyone reading this, I’m Kai. I’m the middle child, sandwiched between 2 sisters. Sometimes they are a bit annoying but most of the time they are there to protect me. I’m athletic and my 4 favorite sports are skiing, snowboarding, soccer and basketball. I love to read (mostly mythology). I’m learning a language (Italian) and I’m almost fluent. I’ll be keeping you posted. Later.

Ciao, sono Joy (Hi, I am Joy). I was born in Chicago and moved to Italy. I am 8 years old and I have 2 dogs. I love to go on vacation with my family and walk with my family and my dogs. I love to ski with my family and my friends. What about you?
I will write more soon, bye.

PS. If you liked this message please write what you liked about it and did not. If you want you can even suggest something like what I should write next time. Bye see you soon!

And most importantly, our dogs. We started this journey with Philly and Bora Bora, our two mixed breed dogs. They’re very cute but not super smart, so we wanted to write for them. The trip from Chicago to Turin was less than ideal, but after settling in they were loving the garden and hikes in their new home. They did sometimes complain about not getting pasta (or even truffles) like many Italian dogs. They can blame their veterinarian (see above) for that. After Philly passed away in 2021, we added another furry friend to our crew, Vento (wind in Italian, to help remind us of the Windy City). He’s smart and could probably write himself, but he doesn’t listen very well, so we’ll continue to write for them.

Have We Always Been Travelers?

The short answer is yes. While neither of us lived abroad or traveled much as kids, we definitely started to get the bug in college. We both had interests in studying abroad, but since we were both engineers and participated in a co-op working program, we didn’t have the time for it. Instead, we started to plan some trips during our school breaks. We actually took 2 classes at Cornell University that seeded and fueled our desire to travel. The first was a physical education class where we received our Padi scuba diving certification (in Lake Cayuga) and the second was a Wines Appreciation Course. As soon as we finished our scuba certification, we planned our first trip to Cozumel, Mexico for diving. That same summer, Dave’s mom needed a car back in Chicago that his brother had out in San Diego. So, we also used it as an opportunity to fly to California and drive across the country back to Chicago. We planned lots of visits to National Parks and camping with AAA TripTik and maps (before the internet). It was an amazing 2 week adventure and we were hooked.

After the wines course, we planned a month long trip to Europe centered around all the wine regions that we had just learned about in class. We stayed in hostels and had a notebook outlining every penny that we spent to stick to our very small budget. Despite this, we still came home with 25 bottles of wine in our backpacks and started our first wine collection. Once we started our engineering jobs, we continued to travel spending many weekends away from our home in New Jersey. We explored most of the east coast around us, falling in love with lobster rolls and the small towns of New England, starting to appreciate good food via trips to NYC, Philadelphia and Washington DC, camping and backpacking in many National and State Parks. We were also lucky enough at that time for Lynn’s parents to be living for a few years outside Paris in France. We jumped at the opportunity to visit them often, using it as a starting point to go to other areas of France, Spain and Greece. All during this time, we continued to try to incorporate one good skiing trip per year.

Once we went back to grad school, the money was tighter, but we already had the bug. And we were not deterred by the birth of Ali. She was on her first cross country plane ride at 8 months where we drove up the California Coast and went to Napa and she has not stopped flying since (the other kids actually flew much sooner — Kai at 6 weeks to move to Chicago, and Joy at 7 weeks to visit Lynn’s family in Vermont).

And as the kids grew, it became easier and easier to travel with them. We became only more constricted by vacation time. As a veterinarian, Lynn had only had 2 weeks of vacation for a long time. We planned each and every one of those days out at the beginning of the year, often picking up extra shifts to earn more days.

For Christmas one year, we hung a beautiful map in our house, with pins on all the places we’d been and all the places we wanted to go. The kids learned a lot of geography and were starting to understand the bigger world around them. All at the same time, Dave and Lynn were working harder and harder and it seemed that the kids were growing up faster and faster.

Why did we choose to live abroad: Inspiration and Planning

The inspiration for our Avventura actually came from a woman we met on a family rafting trip (Row Adventures in Idaho) in 2013. She was a financial planner, but more than that, she said that she asked people what they really wanted to do in life. We immediately answered “travel, eat good food and drink, spend time with family”. We didn’t have to give it much thought. We only wish we could do it more. “But you could” she said. “How?” we thought. And that got the ball rolling. We have always wanted to spend our retirement traveling and experiencing the world. But we had the questions everybody has. Will we make it to retirement together? Will we be healthy enough to do the things we want to do? Wouldn’t it be amazing to give our kids this experience as well? Why not now? What was holding us back?

The answer for us (and for most people we imagine) was a lot. Lynn loved her job as a veterinarian. We loved our home and friends. We didn’t have extra money. Our kids were really happy with school, activities, and friends. Yet, we defined that there might be a window in our lives where our kids were old enough to remember and thrive from this experience, young enough that they still liked us, and also that our parents were still relatively young and healthy. Our responsibilities were in fact manageable. Maybe that was the right time. And for us, that moment was 5 years out. Our youngest would be 6 and our oldest 11 (not yet in high school). We would have time to save and plan for the experience. It was far enough out that it was not quite real, but still gave us something to be excited about.

Why We Chose Italy – And Why Turin?

“The world was our oyster”. We could literally pick anywhere. But, when we went back to our original goals of the ability to travel easily, eating good food, enjoying wine, and being relaxed and happy as a family together, we started to narrow down our choices. We added in the extra challenge of language learning, affordability, easy and friendly people, as well as allowing us fun adventure on the weekends and we settled on Turin, Italy.

Even years into this experience, people still ask us this question…why Turin? By focusing on the goals above and by having many conversations, as well as some investigatory travels (of course, that was the best part!), we landed in this relatively unknown Northwest corner of Italy. Most importantly, we are close to skiing (this was huge for Lynn), but we found that northern Italy has the benefit of being a true Italian city, without some of the negatives. It has easy going people and living (beautiful architecture, piazzas, aperitivo), but with more infrastructure (good schools, some organization, and industry) than the southern part of Italy. It has a strong football culture (Juventus, FC Torino), amazing Piemontese food, a world-class wine region an hour away (Barolo/Barbaresco). There are no crowds, little tourism, and a low usage of English. All positives for us.

What we later figured out was that this particular region has given our family the ability to experience a totally different way of living that I believe is difficult to find in the United States. We are city people by nature. In our adult lives, we have mostly lived in center city Philadelphia and Chicago. Although we love the quiet of the country, we were never willing to give up the culture and bustle of the city. We enjoy diverse food, people, and experiences. Our lives in Turin have ended up bridging the gap. We live in a house surrounded by forest and nature. Our kids play and build forts among our 5 acres of land and our dogs hike on extensive trail systems. We regularly pass flocks of sheep and farms on our 10 minute journey to the center of Turin. Although Turin is much smaller than Chicago (a little under 1 million people), it still gives us our necessary daily dosage of movement and vibrancy. We have loved the combination and only wish we could find it in the States.