Designing A Life: From Galway to Gondolas

Orna O’Reilly, accomplished interior designer shares her journey from Ireland to thrilling days in South Africa, where she queued 5 hours to vote for Nelson Mandela to perilous times dodging danger in Mozambique. 
Once back in Ireland, she felt the irresistible pull to the place of her dreams: Italy. Her passion for Italian landscapes and culture reveals her decade-long affair with the heart of Europe and her leap of faith in selling her Galway home for a new chapter near Padova. Her stories capture the essence of community acceptance and the delicate dance of belonging in a foreign land.

Whether you want to relocate abroad or simply crave an armchair travel escape, Orna's candid insights offer a window into the expatriate life in Italy—a testament to the transformative power of embracing new horizons.

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Chapters

• 0:06 Designing Life in Italy
• 10:02 Italian Culture and Expatriate Experience
• 23:49 Life in Italy
• 31:22 Global Travels and Writing Journey
• 36:27 Life's Exploration Through Travel

Transcript

Pat 
Fill To Capacity where heart grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn to quit and too creative not to make a difference.

Pat 
Hi, I am Pat Benincasa and welcome to Fill To Capacity. Today's episode, “Designing A Life: From Galway To Gondolas.” My guest is Orna O'Reilly, interior designer, originally from Dublin, lived in Galway and worked in South Africa and Mozambique. She moved to Italy to become a full-time writer and has an award-winning blog called “Traveling Italy.” She is a contributor for travel and design magazines. In November, 2012, she sold her home in Galway, moved to Italy and bought a home near Padova. Padova is 23 miles or 38 kilometers west of Venice. Orna. I was gonna ask you, is it Padua or Padova?”

Orna 
In Ireland, we pronounce it Padua because that's how it's spelled in English, but it's actually pronounced “Padova.”

Pat 
Alright, thank you. She met Tom Weber and they married in 2016. They moved to Ostuni in Puglia, where they lived for seven years.  Puglia is, is located at the heel of Italy's boot. Now they live in Abano Terme near Padova. 

As a successful interior designer, she wrote a book, “Renovate and Redecorate, Without Breaking A Nail, “a thorough guide to home renovation. She then transitioned from nonfiction to books that she has written while in Italy. The first one, “The Blonde in the Gondola,” the second one, “In the Shadow of the Olive Tree,” and her third book coming out is “Dark Harvest.” When I asked Orna, why Italy, she replied:  “I moved to Italy because I love it here. Quite simply, for the previous 10 years I had wanted to live here, invisible heartstrings pulled at my heart, and I have now been here for 11 years. 

 Pat
Well, welcome Orna O'Reilly. So nice to have you here.

Orna 
Thank you, Pat. Thank you. It's a pleasure.

Pat 
I'd like to start with, you were an interior designer in Ireland, South Africa, Mozambique. Then you decided to move to Italy to be a full-time writer. What sparked that decision?

Orna 
Well, I have been writing for newspapers and magazines for years, but always on the subjects of interior design and sometimes travel, but mostly interior design. 'cause I was a working interior designer for almost 30 years. 

I qualified a long time ago and I moved to South Africa where I opened my own interior design business near Kruger National Park in  a city town, called Limpopo.”  After I opened my business, I was invited by the Norwegian Embassy in Maputo. There had been a 19-year civil war and they invited me to come and do up their embassy and the staff houses in Maputo in Mozambique. And all the embassies came back. They had all gone back to their various countries when the war started, nasty civil war. So I having just opened my business, decided that this was a wonderful opportunity. I flew over to Maputo, which at that stage was really derelict.

Orna 
I mean, pot holes you get lost in, in your car and everything. So I flew in and I stayed in a very horrible little hotel 'cause there had been nobody there for years. And I went to see the Norwegian Embassy, and that sparked a really great business for me.

I did more than 14 embassies, four banks, everything. I did huge work over there, and I had a tiny apartment in a street called Mao Zedong, in the middle of Maputo, right up a little art deco flat at the top of a building opposite the police station in Maputo. And from there I traveled over and back from Maputo, a two hour drive every week. I used to stay one or two nights in Maputo. I had a very nice guy who minded my kids. He stayed with my kids for one or two nights a week.

Orna 
That was fine. So they were all right. I just worked away, climbed onto roofs and scaffolding and everything, and worked very, very well. Most of the workers on those building sites had never even been in a house before. They didn't even know what a curtain was really. The poverty there was absolutely grinding. 

And I, I had one very, very dangerous incident where I was almost killed. Really, I'm not exaggerating. I drove into the middle of a riot accidentally on my way over once, and I was alone in my combi mini bus, and I had all these rocks thrown at me. One just missed the back of my head and was thrown so hard. It went out the opposite window passenger side. I managed to get myself out of that, but it was a very, very frightening experience because five people murdered that day and their cars were burned with them in it.

Orna 
I was very, very lucky. So on and on I went. And then in 2000 I decided to come back to Ireland, and I moved to Galway, which at that stage was the fastest developing city in the EU,believe it or not. It's a small university city on the West coast, on Galway Bay, which is very, very beautiful. And I bought a house in a beautiful little town, a village on the southern shores of Galway Bay with the mountains right behind me, which was absolutely beautiful. 

I lived there for 13 years and then I decided, as I came up to retirement, I thought, now I'm going to go to Italy. It was very interesting because the recession had just hit very badly in November 2008. And, I had to decide. Then when I came up to retirement, I kept the business going, but it was very, very difficult.

Orna 
And I had to decide whether I was gonna stay in Ireland or move to Italy, because at that point I couldn't afford to do both. I had to make a choice, sell my house, or I had always thought it would just be a holiday home in Italy. So I actually had to make a choice. And with the great support of my family, who thought this was another adventure for Orna, basically, I headed off to Italy, having wanted to live here for about 10 years, certainly to have a home here. And I bought a beautiful apartment in a little Hamlet called Fado, which is only 20 minutes from where we're now living, which is fabulous. But it's extremely hilly in Faedo, it's in the Euaganean Hills, which is absolutely one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Vineyards, rolling hills, olive groves. So I lived there and then I met Tom and we got married and we decided to move South to Puglia. We spent seven years there. I never recovered from living up here. So we came back

Pat 
In 2023, there were 5.3 million foreign citizens legally living in Italy. You and your husband Tom are among those millions. So I have lots of questions here! What are the biggest differences in quality of life that you've noticed between Italy and the places you've lived before?

Orna 
Right. First of all, I would say that one of the most amazing things here in Italy is the health service. It's absolutely incredible. It's so efficient because I'm retired and on a pension, an Irish pension, I don't have to pay for any medical, anything. The two surgeries I had on my back in the last few months were completely free drugs, everything, the whole thing. It's absolutely incredible. Now, in Ireland, I was paying hefty medical insurance. Here, I, I don't have to do that. Health system here works on oil wheels. It's complicated. You have to go through a lot of hoops to get the sort of service that you need, but it's well worth it. Yeah.

Pat 
Do you speak Italian?

Orna 
Yes. I can communicate well in Italian, but I'm not fluent.  Thomas is fluent. I'm not.

Pat 
Okay. Well, that's incredible. I mean, health insurance in the US, people lose their houses because of healthcare costs. So for you, you've had two surgeries and you don't pay anything that, that's extraordinary. Wow.

Orna 
Yes.

Orna 
You're prepared to possibly wait, but I didn't have to wait because my situation was quite urgent, so I didn't have to wait. So it was fantastic. And they took me in quickly and twice. It's fine. Very, very good. Immaculate. And the hospitals here are particularly here in northern Italy, and this is one of the reasons we came back up north, was to have this level of medical service and both facilities. But northern Italy is the wealthy part of Italy. And the services are better here. 

South of Italy is beautiful, absolutely magnificent. Puglia is a beautiful area, but to grow older there is a lot more complicated. If you don't have family, because the families live together there, I mean, you have mom and pop and you have all the kids and the grandkids all living in the same building, even in apartments adjoining or upstairs downstairs apartments and duplexes and things like that. We don't have family here in Italy. Tom's and my families are spread. Well, family, I like to say, are spread worldwide.  Daughter in Australia. I have a son in Portugal. I have two daughters in Ireland. Tom has a daughter in Rome. His late wife was Italian, and he has a daughter in Boulder, Colorado. They're all over the place. So we have lots of places to go and they like to come and visit us.

Pat 
Okay. Is Tom an American?

Orna 
Yes, he is. 

Pat 
Alright.

Orna 
St. Louis, Missouri.

Pat 
I do understand what you're saying about the South. My parents were born in Italy and most of my family came from the same village. So I, I understand very much the culture of the South is very, very different than the North.

Orna 
Yes. It's

Pat 
What part of Italian culture have you adopted that has positively changed your daily life?

Orna 
I'd say, I know this sounds ridiculous, but food for a start, the food culture here is completely different, say to in Ireland or South Africa, where I lived as, you know, for also 13 years and I grew up in Dublin. 

But the, the vegetables, the markets, everything. Here, I don't use my deep freeze very much for a start because I do a major shop. Well, I'm not at the moment because of my back, but I do a major shop once a week, but then I buy fruit, vegetables, fish, everything like that. And we try to, it's easy to stick to a Mediterranean diet with the result. There's no weight problems or anything like that, or internal health problems. We're both extremely healthy and we enjoy eating like that. 

Also, the restaurants here, we have no fast food or restaurants here in this part of Italy. There may be some in Padova or in Verona or Venice, but not here in rural Italy, no. There's no such thing. And we just feel we're very lucky to have, there's actually Japanese restaurant here. I can't think of any other foreign restaurant, if you like, that is in this part of the world. So you're eating local produce and food is very good. And I enjoy cooking here much more than I did too. Okay. Of course, that also might be because I have more time because I have a husband and I'm not running a business in,

Pat 
It could be. I'm really curious, will you describe a typical day for you in Italy and how might that differ from your life in Ireland?

Orna 
Gosh, you see, the trouble is it's difficult to actually compare because I was running my business in Ireland right up until I left. So that was very, very busy. I was on the road and enormous amount and visiting building sites. And in South Africa it was the same over in, back to Maputo and running. I had a showroom and, and a business  which was also very busy. 

And when, in 1994 when the government changed in South Africa and the ANC (African National Congress) got into power, I was invited to do all the ANC offices and the house of the premier, which was really, really, really interesting to do as he was gaining power as a prime minister of what was what's now called Mpumalanga. It was then called the  Lowveldt. 

It was a very interesting time for me, really fascinating in fact, and everything changed after that, but it just was different after that. Yeah. Not as easy to be a white woman running her own business in South Africa. Yeah, good at that. After everything, within a few years, everything really changed a lot. By 97, 98, I was seriously contemplating coming back 'cause of my children as well, who were in their late teens at that stage, my two youngest. And I thought that they'd probably be better off in Ireland, but as it happened, one of them went to Portugal and one went to Australia. 

Pat 
You know, it's not, it's not very often that someone gets to live history in the making and you, you've done that.

Orna 
Yes. I voted for Nelson Mandela. I queued for five hours to vote for Nelson Mandela in the fairgrounds... in this queue that went on forever. It was incredible people singing and dancing and there was, there I was in the middle of all this. It was incredible. Yes.

Pat 
Coming back to Italy now, in terms of community and belonging, how have you navigated being an expat and integrating into local Italian society?

Orna 
It's actually been very, very easy. When I moved to Faedo, I was on my own. I hadn't met Tom at that stage, but it was such, it was a little hamlet. And of course, this Irish woman landing outta the blue into the middle of this totally Italian little hamlet caused, a little touch of consternation, let's put it that way. So I got to know a lot of people pretty quickly and, and that was great. And the interesting thing too was I had a nice outdoor area and I could see everybody going by outside. And I used to sit out in the evenings with my, apertivo and people would stop and chat and I got to know a lot of people. And then I met Tom and that all changed because I was up and down to Vicenza, which is a beautiful city by the way.

Orna 
And nobody seems to realize jewel of a city Vicenza is. And then we decided to get married and move down south to, for an, an adventure. And we started an olive farm. We built a house on what basically was just a rocky site and did all the work and renovated it and did everything and planted 84 olive trees and, uh, over a hundred laurel for hedging. And it was fabulous, really. It really was lovely. But we were very isolated and down there we had the most incredible social life and Italians, and it was wonderful. A lot of arty people, artists, and all that sort of community. It was really very enjoyable. And that was my biggest difficulty when we decided to leave Julio was leaving all these wonderful friends behind. 'cause I really loved our friends, you know, really, they were all wonderful and we had the most incredible social life barbecuing and the climate's so wonderful down there as well.

Orna 
It's different here. We haven't been here for long. We've been here just over a year, but most of that time has been taken up with, we're staying in a medical rehab hotel at the moment for a month. Uh, because the apartment we rented, we're still in the process of buying and finalizing the sale of the house. And in the meantime, we're renting, which I don't really like to have to do, but we are, it's temporary. So in between one rental ending and another beginning at the beginning of May, we decided to have a month like complete chill out and relax for a month in this wonderful rehab hotel called the Amitage. It's lovely.  So that's where we are at the moment.

Pat 
Well, it's interesting, I'm curious, in the 11 years that you've been in Italy, are there changes happening in Italy that you've noticed?

Orna 
Not really. Maybe an Italian person would tell you differently, but I don't notice any change. It seems the same to me all the time. Julia needs a lot of infrastructure work done on it. Um, it's all beautiful in summer, but in winter gets very neglected and, you know, it's, it needs an influx of money and it's getting it to a certain degree. And I'm sure in years to come it'll be a different sort of place, but they're different, different sort of people as well. Down South, they're probably more sociable, though I haven't never had a problem with being sociable with people. So it's fine. It doesn't worry me one way or another. We'll build a life here as soon as we have our new apartment that we wanna buy, and we'll start a proper life here and get to know people.

Pat 
Orna, what is it about Italy that speaks to you so deeply?

Orna 
Well, there are a few things. First one is the weather. Actually, one of the most important things. I know that when my parents grew old and they were in a, an old folks home, basically, they've both passed now. And I used to go and visit them and it's, the rain was always streaming down the windows and the clouds were sitting on top of the trees. And when my youngest daughter, when we came back from South Africa, I always remember her standing outside the front door in Galway and saying, mom, why do we have to live with all this terrible weather? Because she'd been, she'd been brought up in South Africa and she couldn't understand what we were doing in the rain and the cold and the wind in the west of Ireland. So one of the great attractions was I used to come here every year, a couple of times a year with my parents from the year 2001. And, uh, I just loved it. We'd come here, the weather was always beautiful. But another great attraction for me was the fact that Palladio has built so many beautiful villas here. And it's been my goal to see all the Palladian Villas in the Veneto. And that's where I met Tom. Uh, we were both visiting, uh, Villa Ana Mare Hanza, and that's how we met.

Pat 
Okay,

Orna 
So he's a Palladian fan too.

Pat 
So listeners, Andrea Palladio was an Italian Renaissance architect, active in the Venetian Republic. So that's what Orna is referring to. Now, I'd like to move to your books.

Pat 
I'm curious, are you independently published or traditionally published? Do you have an agent?

Orna 
No, I have a publisher the first time, my first book, fictional book, which was great fun to write. And I only really write for my own pleasure. And if people enjoy the books, then that's great. I'm not going to make a million on these books. But “The Blonde In The  Gondola” was very much my own experiences in there. And it's set in Venice, which I love and know very well by now. Obviously from also being a travel blogger, I got invited loads of times to go on all sorts of tours of Venice with, with the tour people who wanted me to publicize their tours, which I did, and got to know Venice very well as a result. And the inner workings of Venice rather than just the tourist trail and how you can enjoy Venice without being trampled to death by tourists, which is very important.

Orna 
But “The Blonde In The  Gondola,” no, I didn't publish it myself. I sent out to every, I had the big book on all the literary agents and publishers, and I finally got a publisher. And so after about 40 rejections, I have to say, but I thought if I, if I publish this myself, uh, I won't know that anybody really likes it. I, I won't be confident about it. Okay. And I thought if nobody wants to publish it, I'm certainly not gonna publish it myself. But I did get a publisher. In fact, I was in Australia at the time visiting, we were over visiting my daughter, and I got an email saying, yes, we'll publish it. We like it. So that was fine.

Orna 
Now I, they published the second one and they're publishing the third one, and they wanna republish, “Renovate and Redecorate Without Breaking A Nail,”  That's fine. Updating that book at the moment because things have moved on since I published it 10 years ago. So needs to be updated.

Pat 
Well, I have to say, I read “The Blonde in the Gondola,” which as you said, takes place in Venice, and I really enjoyed this book with all the intrigue, plot twists and turns. And I really enjoyed the rich descriptions of Palladian  architecture and getting an inside look at interior design work, plus detailed views of Venice from Cali to canals to historical sites. I mean, that was really enjoyable. And then your second book “In The Shadow of the Olive Tree,” takes place in Puglia, in the southern region at the heel of Italy. Now writing about different regions in Italy, how do you capture the distinct character and spirit of each place? How do you do that?

Orna 
I think it's just, it's because I get such pleasure out of looking at things. I think having been a designer for so long and having been in the creative side of industry, if you like, I, I like looking at the details. I take a lot of photographs. The palazzo I described in “The Blonde In The Gondola,” I was in, and I took photographs. I wasn't allowed to publish the photographs. I wasn't even allowed to say I'd visited there, but it's a beautiful palazzo and people live in it. And I described that entirely in the book actually, because I thought I'd actually be able to visit, uh, working palazzo, uh, just close to the academia bridge, the big wooden bridge that crosses the canal, uh, near Piazza San Marco. Absolutely beautiful. But I was surprised at the lack of luxury in it actually. And I did it up in my mind when I was describing how Olivia renovates that palazzo, I was really describing how I would've liked to have done it up myself if I had been given that dream job that she got basically,

Pat 
Well, it was so authentic. I felt like I was picking wall sample colors. I mean, I felt like I was right there. And so you did a beautiful job, uh, bringing the viewer into that world. 

Now I follow expats in Italy. It's a Facebook group, and people who move to Italy talk about things like enormous red tape bureaucracy, difficulty finding work there. So I'd like to ask, what challenges, challenges or surprises have you encountered while adjusting to life in Italy?

Orna 
I haven't encountered that many, to be honest with you. The bureaucracy in Puglia was a nightmare that I can't, I don't even want to go into it. Somebody will sue for slander or whatever. But yes, we had difficulty with aspects of Puglia. Puglia is basically a small town and, and it's difficult to navigate your way through a place like Oto (inaudible). 

Whereas up here in the Veneto, things are, things go a lot more smoothly. And I have never run into any problems apart from my driving license. It was a mistake on my driving license that was reissued to me. When I moved back to Ireland from South Africa, there was a tiny little error on my driving license. And I spent two and a half years getting my Italian driving license as a result because I didn't have enough Italian then to do my driving test in Italian. I did not want to have to do it. I persevered and persevered. We were down to first name terms in the driving license office anyway, in here in the Veneto. It was, oh, “hi Warner, you know, ciao Warner, I'd go in no news, sorry, no news.” Years later, I finally got a text from the lady in the driving license place... to tell me that yes, it was true.

Pat 
You did it

Orna 
Yeah, I did it.

Pat 
Oh, that's great. 

Orna 
Rather than that, I haven't had any problem because I'm an EU citizen. To start off, it's makes it a lot easier. Whereas Tom had a lot of bureaucracy to go through. The funny thing was, he had been living here for years with his Italian wife. She passed away sadly, and he had been working for the American government, so he wasn't able to apply for residency before she died because he hadn't retired at that point. And he had a lot of problems getting his residency after she died. But he managed, but it was complicated. And also, when we got married, he had an awful lot more red tape to go through than I did. So, things like that, it was more difficult, the fact that he was American than, and it was easy for me being an EU citizen, very easy.

Pat 
I did notice that on those expat sites on Facebook, many say the same thing. If you have an EU passport, life is much easier than if you're an American or a Canadian. It's a little more difficult.

Orna 
Or Australian. 

Pat 
I also got the impression, I was really amazed at these sites, how many people want to go to Italy to move there? Orna, what advice would you give to someone from another country wanting to move to Italy for the long term? How should they go about it?

Orna 
Well, I think first of all, it's very much age related, depending on your age and whether you have family here or not. I think that for us, living in the north of Italy at our age over 70, it's easier for us to navigate life up here in the North. It's much simpler. There are more facilities for older people here and, uh, down South there are not really the same level of facility, so we're better off up here. 

But for a young person wanting an adventure down South is the place to go, I think really, it's less expensive. It's got everything you possibly want. And, uh, it's really nice. I like the South a lot. Forget for getting old. I don't want to be there. Really? Yeah. I'd rather be up here. Also, we have five international airports virtually on our doorstep here. We're only 45 minutes from Venice, Marco Polo Air, and everybody can fly into Venice. So they, my family can reach me really easily. And we're only a couple of hours from Milan. It works very, very well with all the airports. Verona, Bologna, Venice, Treviso, Bergamo... all these international are right within a couple of hours drive.

Pat 
Well, that's incredible. That's quite the connection. 

Orna 
Yeah.

Pat 
Orna. You've written two books. The third is “Dark Harvest” coming out. Where can people find your books?

Orna 
Okay, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, everywhere. Really, it, it has to be very, very big bestseller to get onto a bookshelf. I know that. And the difficulty of publicizing my books from Italy when they're written in English and I'm Irish. That's made it very, very complicated. The publisher is in Cambridge in England, so it's, it's become a little, it's a little complicated publicizing, but, uh, dark Harvest, I don't know exactly when it's coming out. 

At the moment. We're choosing the font for the cover. They have given us two options for the cover. I like both of them. So I put it out to a boat with six friends,have a look. Tell me what you think. Three, three and three. So that was a great help. Yes. But they all said they weren't sure about the font, so I'm getting, waiting for samples of different font for the cover. Okay. Other than that, it's all done. And the book is, uh, at the moment, it's being proofread and edited wherever necessary. And I had great fun writing it. It's a little naughty.

Pat 
That's okay.

Orna 
Yeah.

Pat 
So Orna, what is next for you as a writer?

Orna 
Well, I'm, I'm setting out a new book. I was hoping to get “Dark Harvest,” put to bed completely, you know, and know when it's coming out so that I can devote some time to publicizing it as best I can. Uh, the next book is in my head, and I have a lot of notes and characters. I have their names, I have everything. There's a lot of truth in it as well, like the other books, but you have to look carefully to find them. But, you know, I have found it very therapeutic writing about things that have happened to me, but writing about them in the third person been incredibly therapeutic, hard to describe really. But I have laughed and cried writing these. So it has been quite a journey for me. I'm glad people enjoy them. People who've read them certainly seem to enjoy. That's the main thing.

Pat 
Well, there is a sense of authenticity, I have to say in the character, in your first book, Olivia, she felt very genuine. And as a reader, I could relate to her so easily. And I did wonder how much of Orna is in her. And you've kind of answered that a little bit.

Orna 
It's more the way she looks at things and, uh, some of her experience as well. But Olivia is in all three books. She's, it's the same characters. It goes, we don't have Jane in the second book, but we have a Janet, so on and so forth. Uh, so the characters then all come together for the third book, which is the windup of the trilogy, which we're in the process of naming at the moment, but it'll be something Italy.

Pat 
Okay. Well, Orna, thank you for coming on FTC today. And I'm just struck, I almost wanna call you a, uh, a global citizen because of your travels and things that you've done, places you've lived, and the history you've lived through. I mean, that, that was really quite a story. And so thank you for sharing with my listeners this incredible tale, the travels of Orna.

Orna 
Yes. I've just got itchy feet, I think, because if you think about it, I've been in Italy 11 years and I've moved three times.

Pat 
Yeah, I would say so. In the States, we have an expression: “You have ants in your pants.”

Orna 
Yes, I do. Yes.

Pat 
Okay.

Orna 
I love to travel. I've traveled all over the world, basically on my own most of the time. But that's another story I was widowed so long ago that I had to decide do I travel or not? And I just loved it. And I had such a busy life. It was so wonderful to travel. I've traveled all over the world, virtually on my own.

Pat 
I think the thing that strikes me about you, when you talk about being widowed early and you made the decision to travel, it's really, you made the decision to live and to live fully. 

Orna 
Yes, I did. I didn't want life to pass me by. I wanted to explore all sorts of things. Ever since I was a child, I wanted to travel. And I remember reading travel books as a 10, 12-year-old in the library at school and just thinking, yes, I'd love to go there. Been to Egypt twice, loved, love Egypt, all these places. Just fascinating.

Pat 
Well, I have to say Orna completely and totally, nothing of life has passed you by. Okay. Rest assured. It's very, very clear. Well, thank you again for coming on, and it was delightful having you here.

Orna 
Thank you, Pat. Thank you very much.

Pat 
Thank you. And listeners, if you enjoyed today's podcast, please subscribe or tell your friends. Thank you. Bye.