Dispatch from an Italian Beach Vacation
Issue #44
I’m writing to you this week from the road and, because I’m supposed to be on vacation, today’s issue will be a brief one. As I’m sure many of you know, summer vacation in Italy is sacred. In Rome, many shops, restaurants, and even offices close for at least a week or two, usually for the period surrounding Ferragosto, the national holiday on August 15th. But since Marco and I got married on July 25th (his birthday) and my birthday is August 2nd (that’s right, yesterday), we take our vacation early and often end up working on Ferragosto.
Marco and I have traveled all over Europe together, but since I moved back to Rome in 2019, I’ve spent my birthday on a different beach in Italy every year. In 2019, we went to Ponza, a beautiful little island off the coast of Lazio. In 2020, during Covid, we only managed to get away for a night and spent my birthday on the beach in Santa Severa, in the shadow of a castle about an hour from Rome. In 2021, for our honeymoon, we spent two weeks exploring Sicily. Last year we went to Sardinia for ten days. And this year, we’re spending our vacation road tripping around Puglia and Calabria. We love cities and the countryside, but it just doesn’t feel like a real summer vacation if we’re not spending it at the beach.
I don’t want to reveal too much about this trip yet, since we’re still on it, but I’ve been sharing some photos over on Instagram. This is my first time visiting Calabria and I have some thoughts about the region that I will share at a later date, but I’ve written about Puglia before, both in this newsletter and for publications like Architectural Digest and Fodor’s. I’ll put some links below in the Further Reading section. In the meantime, comment with your questions about Puglia, Calabria, Italian beaches, or anything else you want to know. I’ll be back in Rome next week, just in time for the city to empty out!
Further Reading
In my most personal travel feature yet, I wrote about my attempt to vacation like an Italian on our honeymoon in Sicily for Hemispheres.
Here’s the aforementioned Architecture Digest article about how to plan a perfect road trip in southern Italy, which they just sent out in their newsletter again.
For Fodor’s, I wrote about the rustic trulli that have been transformed into villas and Airbnbs. You can read that article here.
I wrote about why you should plan a trip to Puglia in issue #15. I might have to dedicate another issue to the region, highlighting my new finds from this trip soon!
Issue #31 was all about why you should plan a trip to Sardinia, featuring the places we visited on our summer vacation last year.
Nicky Swallow, author of a new book about Hotel Cala di Volpe on Sardinia’s glamorous Costa Smeralda, and I discussed Sardinia in last week’s issue.
In case you missed it, issue #33 was dedicated to answer reader-submitted questions about traveling in Italy in July and August. Comment with your questions or email newromantimes@substack.com and I might just dedicate a future issue to answering them!