More memories of Capri

Image | April 7, 2013 | a love letter to rome and italy!

More memories of Capri as I look over photographs I took of the picaresque island in 2006. We spent eight days on the island in October and November and probably only explored half of the isle! I would like to balance this upcoming visit with the same relaxed lifestyle we adapted then whilst also exploring the island more. I love the Villa San Michele (home of Swedish psychiatrist and author of The Story of San Michele … Axel Munthe) – it’s a beautiful old villa that houses an enchanting bird sanctuary and boasts some of the best views of Capri on the island. I have a soft spot for birds, and I especially adore bird sanctuaries, ever since my mum sent me off to Mass Audobon as a child and I fell in love with bird watching and listening.

I remember loving Capri the first couple of day trips we took there from Naples and Sorrento in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For me, I get into such a city mode with my love affair of Rome it is sometimes not until later that I feel I can tear myself away from the eternal city for a different Italian experience. I love the nature and the beauty of Southern Italy but the architecture, art, history and pulse of Rome calls to me an urban Siren’s call. Capri and Sorrento may be the mythical home of the Sirens (and it is no surprise given it’s soaring cliffs and sparkling waters) but I always found the pleasures of Rome to be far more tempting.

After two visits last year to Rome and a few days in Naples and after a long winter (and my husband’s very bad car accident right before christmas) we both decided we wanted to relax adrift the mediterranean. We wanted a quiet spot filled with the Italian riches of nature, a little architecture, some ruins (Villa Jovis), some views (Capri and Ana Capri!), a central location (day trip to Ravello and Paestum, ferries to the Amalfi Coast) and a whole island where you can walk, swim, trek or take a white convertible taxi or a ski lift to wander around.

We aren’t making too many plans and I’ve promised not to bring my camera everywhere. I am planning on taking my film camera with rolls of portra 35mm film and marking special days and times to go around the island myself and go on several shoots whilst he is swimming or lying by the pool. There’s something about not planning much and seeing where the day takes you that is infinitely more like a holiday than a list filled grand tour. Let’s see where in the moment living can take us I suppose!

And we must take another little boat around the island, that’s for sure. This time we’ll remember the sun block.

Memories of Capri

Image | April 5, 2013 | a love letter to rome and italy!

I saw this gorgeous photo shoot which reminded me of my week on Capri in 2006. Next month we are returning for a week on the beautiful island. In anticipation of this holiday I went through a few old shots of the island I took with my broken camera!

: photo by Leah Kua

The photographer is Leah Kua, photo courtesy of greylikesweddings.com

This photoshoot reminds me of a day in 2006 floating around Capri in the same style boat! Except somehow we didn’t come off as glamorous and dreamy. I didn’t feel that way anyway! When we stopped outside Tiberius’ Cave and jumped off the boat and swam into the mysterious Blue Grotto I got a weird rash from touching the algae or something. Then when I inelegantly hauled myself back up the boat ladder in my red faced 20th try, my hair dried plastered to my head, tangled and frizzy. We forgot to bring pellegrino and glasses or a picnic and got sunburns. (We were still incredibly enchanted and happy the entire boat trip – it was wonderful and dreamy to behold – but no-one would accuse us of being an effortlessly glamorous, photogenic couple like the one featured)! Hey they may look 1,000 times more fabulous but were have the bohemian chic schtick down pat. I mean, matching khakis couple? Just no. I joke… sort of.

So I poured over some old shots taken of my week in Capri in 2006 (taken with my old broken camera).

walking up the garden at the beautiful villa san michele

the blue grotto café near the docks

taken from a little boat floating around the island

a view from the room in 2006 (these shots were taken from my old broken camera and the photoshopping was harsh back then too)

a beautiful mist rolled into view one morning as we wandered around capri and ana capri. the architecture is white, blue and gold and elegantly beautiful. the pool was an interior ‘ancient roman’ style hand painted tile pool from our hotel the villa tiberius.

italian journey

Image | February 19, 2013November 13, 2013 | a love letter to rome and italy!

Rome is a Fellini movie. It is the annual barbarian invasion. It is a lack of catalytic converters. It is hundreds of vespas whirring and beeping through roundabouts. It is a hypnotic siren screaming through the city.

Rome is an open-aired art museum, a feast for all the senses. It is packed with all that I want out of life, footsteps away from the next breathtaking view or taste. It is life and death in some delicate balance, in a dance on the edge of something imperceptible. It is the footsteps of Artemisia Gentileschi, it is the footsteps of the Caesars. It is 6,000 year old Egyptian obelisks, it is 1800 year old Aurelian walls, it is the Grand Old Tour still walkable. It is the burial grounds of the English Romantic Poets. It is a dream. It is the eternal city. All roads still lead to it.

Venezia is a Grimm fairytale come to life, a place of winding, labyrinthine bridges and walkways. A place for spies and mercenaries. A city of corners and gondola rides at night, when no-one else is on the water and the gondolier sings old songs out into the dark while you float past the Rialto Bridge and the apartments of Casanova. Venice is the 1700s. Venice is a child’s dream, or nightmare; a place to wander to hear the echoes of your footsteps over endless stone. To move in and out of chocolate shops, each window more and more decadent in their display, until your pockets are overflowing with Venus’ Nipples and confectionaries. Venice is candy and wine, canals and shuttered windows with a latch missing so you can listen to a record playing Billie Holiday songs, her voice finding nowhere to rest, because Venice is not made of earth it is made of bones. Venice is gnocchi and gorgonzola. It is carnival masks and orchestras. It is the smell of water and decay. It is a memory.

Firenze is for the maestros. Florence is sweet shops and pignolis and bridges. Florence is theRenaissance. It is inventions and giants and towers. It is candied almonds and hot chocolate and olive trees. It is truffled pesto. It is chestnuts and hazelnut cream. Florence is old bookshops and new students among a sea of young faces and young lovers’ bodies. It is rolling hills and gardens. It is palazzos and art museums and intrigues. It is Dante’s inferno. It is Savonarola’s funeral pyre. It is the last gasp of the Medicis.

Milano is birds and textiles and modern life teeming with the future. It is fashion. It is elegant and impersonal. It is brief. It is closed for renovation so you don’t get to see Da Vinci’s Last Supper, which is the reason you went there in the first place. It is Occidental, it is larger than life, it is dry white wines and prosecco. It is always moving.

Capri is Tiberius’ playground, it is the Blue Grotto, it is a private boat around the island, it is climbing jagged rocks and everything painted Santorini like; blue and white, yellow and gold. It isAna Capri, it is postcard pretty, boutique hotels, it is capreses and spumante for breakfast. It is the blue-green sea and sailboats glittering among the Bay of Naples. It is the jet-setters and the day-trippers. It is one little piazza and two cafes. It is the Madonna of the rocks. It is the Villa San Michele. It is the bird’s eye view of everything. It is the sparkle of sun on the water.

Sorrento is a bustling city-village. It is on the edge of the Bay of Naples, the connector to sights and sounds of the Amalfi coast. Sorrento is orange and lemon scented. It is orange and lemon groves and tomatoes on the vine, ripening to a deep red. It is gigantic, fleshy lemons used for white fish and sweet delicate lemons for limoncello. It is capers and shellfish and bufalo mozzarella from Campania.

Napoli is the street, it is life in the streets. Naples is long, narrow alleyways, with tiny rows of iron balconies draped neatly with laundry. It the smell of the sea. It is the best view of Vesuvius. Naples is a garbage problem. It is 30% unemployment thirty years running. Naples is beautiful between the shadows.

Naples is a sprawling, glittering, wild animal of a city, it is the pulse and growl of a wild thing. It is a faded kingdom, a half empty castle, a city on a hill. It is the Spaccanapoli, it is the best coffee in the world, the best bread, the best pizza. It is the tarnished jewel of the south, it is, as oneMilanese said to me recently, the North’s shame. It is proud.

Naples is a living, breathing chiaroscuro. It is Caravaggio’s getaway. It is fishing boats. It is theMuseo Archeoligico, the Capidimonte, the cloistered gardens filled with painted Spanish tiles. Naples is the house for the spoils of Pompeii. It is an opera, played out in the living room of the town square, it is the family pasiegetta. It is Januarius’ blood, it is the outstretched wings of aswallow, it is the solemn hum of machinery. It is ecstasy and despair. It is a crying out.

It is see Naples and die.

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* an extra note on rome:

Roma was my first European city.

It was my first glimpse of the things I find most beautiful in the world.

There were ruins, Renaissance architecture, 600 year old fountains and marble floors.

There were Greco-Roman mosaics, pagan temples, frescoes, umbrella pines and cypress trees in manicured gardens.

And ancient aqueducts to wander around in.

There was hot espresso and spicy wine to drink and penne all’arrabbiata, a classic Roman dish, to taste.

Rome had decayed beauty balanced out by its bright earthy colors against the perfect sunsets.

There were fat clouds against azure skies.

When in Rome that oft used but true cliché – that la dolce vita – the sweet life, is alive and well in the eternal city.

There were a thousand church bells ringing throughout the city on afternoon walks, from the very churches packed with masterpieces.

There were elegant villa museums full of Italian art and baroque curves and decorated with ancient statuary. Rome was everything all at once.

On Rome

February 19, 2013February 19, 2013 | a love letter to rome and italy!

I have a wanderlust for all the beautiful and fascinating places in the world, especially art filled cities full of history and literary haunts.

In 1998, when I was 22 I first traveled to Italy. From the moment we stepped out of our tiny Hotel Genio and around the corner to the Piazza Navona, we knew Rome was going to answer our wildest dreams with an even greater beauty. I tell people who have not been there or who have been there and have somehow not appreciated the treasures of Rome: Rome is a feast of all senses, an open air museum, a celebration.

Rome is the place I love and crave and long for because nowhere else in the world can I wander into a church and see several Caravaggio’s against the backdrop of somber hymns and sit in a pew and admire his work in silence.

There’s the wild strawberries to eat on cobblestones from a market.

There’s the ruins at night, to stand above them and linger there for an hour, to feel transported back in time, very far back in time.

There’s wandering in the footsteps of Oscar Wilde wandering in the footsteps of Keats and Shelley. There’s Babingtons (there’s my anglo side which needs to be satisfied).

There’s Artemisia Gentileschi paintings scattered across Rome (and Florence and Naples) awaiting my worshipful gaze.

There’s Sundays in Rome, the greatest day, the only place you feel you should be in the world on a Sunday when you are there. Away from the awful pollution of the cars (my one pet peeve of Rome)… to roam on the Appian Way, to stop and eat somewhere or pick red poppies along the road.

Pizza at Bafetto. Pinot nero. Frascati. Tears of Christ. The view of Rome atop the Wedding cake. The Borgia rooms. Artichoke season. Hazelnuts. Pine nuts. Capreses. Prosecco. Oranges. Lemons. Olives. Trastevere apple bread and long lunches there and hours photographing the grafitti. Nuns walking through the city. Red domes turned gold. Unexpected art exhibitions. Villa Borghese. Penne alla’arrabiata. Porcini. Truffles. White fish. Fisherman’s stew. Capotoline Hill.

There are a thousand other moments I love in Rome. These are just a few.

I love the cemeteries of Rome. I live for all the architectural details. And the marble. And a thousand saints and angels and statues. And all the Renaissance art and intricate Pompeiian mosaics. And the ruins. Not to mention I have an almost inexpressible feeling of happiness in certain slants of Italian sunlight and shadow, with the scent of lemon and orange trees accompanying me on a ramble, content with a glimpse of a white dove on Palatine hill or brushing past an olive branch. Just fountain hopping at night makes me happy. I cannot tire of the umbrella pines and cypress trees. Or taking afternoon tea at Babington’s or daydreaming in 18th century splendor at Caffe Greco, where the English Romantics mused and drank at the same tiny marble tables.

Finding a room with a view. And following the Roman cats through the ruins! And trying to visit all nine hundred beautiful old churches. (Impossible). And the Borghese gardens and palazzo museums and the sound of water fountains and sculptures and Italian gardens and vespas and red roof tiles. And a hundred thousand other things I will try to capture on this blog. (And I love Naples & Florence & all of Italy, which will be featured some times, as well as related art exhibits, books, music & films)!