Date: 02/08/2024 Location: Naples, Italy
Italy still refuses to belong to the civilized world. Paper tickets, train schedules that laugh in the face of Google Maps, buses that arrive once an hour if they feel like it. But then—through the window—Vesuvius appears: a drowsing monster framed by the bus window, lazy and ominous. The Neapolitan houses cling to the cliffs like ‘romanticism’ itself — peeling stucco, laundry strung between balconies, a thousand shades of gold under that stupidly perfect sky.
By the time we reach Sorrento, the sun has melted us into exhaustion. We sleep like the dead until evening, only to wake at dusk just in time to catch the last sigh of a sunset—pink smudged into indigo…
Date: 03/08/2024 Location: Capri, Italy
We wake late, expecting nothing from breakfast — the kind of morning where coffee is a mercy and a stale croissant would feel like justice. Instead, we’re ambushed by an Italian grandmother. Her English dissolves into gestures, but her mission is clear: Mangia, mangia! (A friendly and welcoming phrase in Italian that encourage people to eat.) She loads our plates with prosciutto so thin it melts like a sin on the tongue, clouds of fresh mozzarella, honey pooling in the craters of ricotta. The cake is damp with syrup; the eggs, scandalously buttery.
Capri is a lie in the best way — a postcard that forgot it’s supposed to be flat, all vertiginous cliffs and water so blue it hums. The island runs on cash and chaos: no AC, no logic, just lemonade served in glasses still sticky with sunlight. At Monte Solaro, the clouds roll in like a slow-motion tide, swallowing the island whole before exhaling it back into clarity. Then, just like that, the haze lifts. Clarity returns, the water now translucent as jelly, dotted with boats cutting lazy arcs. Swimmers bob like buoys, their laughter carried up the cliffs.
And then — the other cable car floats past, strangers suspended in midair. I wave like a fool. They wave back. For a second, we’re all in the same dream. A postcard, yes, but one that smells of lemonade and sunscreen and feels alive under your fingertips.
Date: 04/08/2024 Location: Sorrento, Italy
A day for surrender. We slept until noon, then wandered streets where lemons grew to grotesque, glorious sizes—big as fists, bright as warning signs. The shops sold ceramic lemons, polished and useless. (We bought two.)
Later, the Sorrento cove we’d missed days prior: teenagers cannonballing off rocks, tourists basting in oil, the sea chewing lazily at the shore. The wind stole every photo attempt. It didn’t matter. The haze clung to everything — the horizon, my hair, the memory of this place.
Yes, the buses are late. Yes, the humidity glues your clothes to your skin. But the grandmothers will feed you cheese. A stranger toasts you with limoncello; the sea flickers like a mirage. The light will gild even the most stubborn cloud.
Maybe this is why people romanticize Italy.