A Honeymoon Through Italy - The New York Times

A Honeymoon Through Italy - The New York Times
7/11/15 12:56 AM
http://nyti.ms/1JTxsS1
Travel
A Honeymoon
Through Italy
We danced at midnight in Venice, motored through Tuscany and made

memories. Just as newlyweds should.
By PORTER FOX
JULY 10, 2015
The trip began years before we met, when Sara wrote a short story about the
perfect marriage. It started like this: ____ and I are moving to Europe to paint
and make love, right after he finishes his diamond floor. We will live in a gigantic
home filled with magic and passion. One of our favorite things to do in the summer
will be to drive our 68 Ferrari to the end of Italy and take a boat to a tiny island
with nothing on it. There, we will have a picnic at sunset, fall asleep with blankets
and small furs and wake up in the morning and go home.
Two years after she wrote the story we fell in love. Two years after that, my
name filled the ____. And two years later, we finally got around to planning our
honeymoon. I hadnt yet started the diamond floor, but I suggested we recreate the
story anyway: We would fly to Venice, take the train to Tuscany, rent a vintage car,
hop a boat to Sicily. It would be a dream come true, an old-fashioned, three-week
bridal tour through the most romantic country in the world. It was extravagant, but
thats what honeymoons are supposed to be.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/travel/a-honeymoon-through-itr&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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The whole notion of honeymoons has been fanciful, if not bizarre, since they
came into fashion. The tradition may or may not have been handed down from the
ancient custom of bride kidnapping. The Norse word hjunottsmanathr means
to go into hiding, and some historians say that it referred to the period between
abducting a woman and the moment her family stopped looking for her.
Deuteronomy 24:5 is more generous, stating that a newly married man should be
free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken.
The phrase hony moone appeared in the mid-16th century. Some connect
this to a supposed Babylonian practice of giving the bride and groom a months
supply of honey wine and sending them away for a cycle of the moon to conceive a
child. Thomas Blounts 1656 Glossographia describes the more accepted, and
fatalistic, definition, declaring that a new marriage, is honey now, but will [fade]
as the moon.
A lot has changed since then. More than three-quarters of couples asked
whether theyd be taking a honeymoon said they would, according to the Knots
research on its members in recent years. The average length is eight days. Most
couples pay for their own honeymoon, and most trips are international, costing
more than $5,000. More than half of them check Facebook from their trips. The
number of couples who go on their dream honeymoon is about one in four.
We were no Vikings but this would be a chance for us to both vanish while at
the same time live out a dream version of our life. Our love was still beaming when
we boarded a flight to Venice in April. The T.S.A. and a jam-packed 767 dimmed it
for the next 12 hours, but a middle-aged woman holding our newly shared surname
on a placard in Marco Polo Airport lifted us from the malaise. I hadnt used a travel
agent in 20 years but a friend, thankfully, advised it.
My first question to our agent, Cindy Goldberger, was how to take the train
from the Venice airport to our hotel. Her response: You dont. You take a boat.
Our private launch picked us up a few hundred yards from the airport
terminal. Five minutes later we cut across the Venice Lagoon golden sun burning
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through the fog, luggage stacked on white leather seats, the air heavy with the
smell of boggy wetlands.
It was the first week of April. The sea breeze was cool, and the sun was
powerful. We passed the auburn terra cotta roofs of Murano and the grassy fields
of Le Vignole. Our captain, who hardly seemed to notice that we had climbed
aboard his boat, pointed to the east and we watched the rambling skyline of the
Bride of the Sea lift above the horizon.
A white-jacketed concierge met us at the Belmond Hotel Cipriani dock. The
Cipriani sits on the island of Giudecca, a five-minute boat ride from Piazza San
Marco. Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter and a half-dozen other heads of state
slept there. George Clooney was married there. Giacomo Casanova himself was
said to court maidens in the gardens around the Cipriani spa.
Three footmen carried our bags from the boat, and another guided us to a 30foot buffet of croissants, cured meats, biscuits, salads, fresh fruit and 20 platters
that I didnt, and still dont, have names for. There was Champagne. There were
five cheese wheels. There was something that looked like souffl but wasnt. There
were 13 varieties of bread. We ordered omelets and mimosas and sat in the sun,
fully immersed in the dream.
Venice has been a sanctum of decadence since the Middle Ages. After fleeing
from the Goths, Avars and Huns in the fifth and sixth centuries, Venetian
merchants built a maritime empire on the citys 117 islets and ruled the Adriatic for
half a millennium. Venetian businessmen traded with India, China and Persia for
the most precious jewels, fabrics, spices and goods. The finery drew businessmen,
royalty and travelers from all over the world.
When lovers during the belle poque reworked the classic voyage la faon
anglaise a painful, very British honeymoon tradition popularized in the early
19th century, in which the entire wedding party traveled around the country
visiting guests who could not make it to the wedding many boarded trains and
steamers for Venice. Rules of the new honeymoon: drink, eat, sleep in and practice,
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as the Bible puts it, acts of the flesh.

We slept for 13 hours our first night at the Cipriani, on a king bed with goose
down pillows. The next day we took the hotel launch, a vintage mahogany Venetian
motoscafo, to Piazza San Marco and meandered along the canals. We crossed 14
stone bridges and eight piazzas, ending up at the Gallerie dellAccademia beneath
huge oils painted by Titian, Giorgione and Tintoretto. That afternoon we sat under
a honeysuckle tree and watched the murky water slide by. It was 38 degrees and
raining at home in New York City. It was 75 on the Rialto Bridge with poufy clouds
and a pale blue sky that looked like a painting straight from the Renaissance.
That night we ate at an old-style restaurant called Antiche Carampane. A sign
in the window warned No Tourist Menu. We ordered bay scallops caught in the
lagoon, roasted fennel, artichoke salad and baby squid with pasta in ink sauce. The
waiter told us how the walls of Venetian buildings are built like boats: three layers
of wood and a lacquer finish. Once a month, he said, during the full moon, the
ocean fills the restaurant with three feet of salt water. The staff puts chairs and
rugs on the tables the night before and comes to work early to mop up the place
before opening for business.
There had been at least 5,000 people in Piazza San Marco all day. At midnight
that night it was empty. I happened to have our wedding mix saved on my phone
and played it from my shirt pocket as we danced over the polished cobblestones.
The air smelled like wood smoke and we could hear the low rumble of vaporetti
cruising the Grand Canal. San Marcos bell tower was a dark obelisk against the
silvery moonlight. As we twirled over the scaffolding the buskers use during the
day, I felt happy and hopeful and thought of a favorite line from Jane Eyre: our
honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or
mine.
We felt like one of the lucky couples on a dream honeymoon the next morning,
traveling 175 miles an hour on a train through the farmland surrounding Padua,
Ferrara and Bologna. Travel agents are soothsayers in a sense, and Cindy had,
correctly, predicted a hangover after our weekend in Venice. Instead of bickering
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our way across the city on three hours of sleep, we glanced at our itinerary, ate
breakfast at the Cipriani and waited for a private motoscafo to take us to the train
station.
Ermanno Gallo met us in Chiusi, Tuscany, four hours later. He was a tall man
with what looked like a volleyball hidden under his shirt. He works for Zephyrus
Classic Car Rental and handed me something that changed our lives for the next
three days: the keys to a 1981 Fiat 124 Spider convertible. My father drove the same
car in his later years and, since he died before Sara met him, I thought she could
commune with him on a kind of spiritual voyage la faon anglaise.
Classic cars sit somewhere between the pope and Leonardo da Vinci in Italy,
especially one that Enzo Ferraris chief engineer helped design. Children on the
side of the road yelled, Bella macchina! as the 124s double overhead cam purred
through vineyards and cattle ranches in Val di Chiana. The swath of farm country
is two hours south of Florence and runs north-south on the border of Arezzo and
Umbria. We hung a right near Il Passaggio up a cyprus-lined driveway to the Villa
di Piazzano, the regional cardinals old headquarters and our home for the next two
days.
Tuscan villas havent changed much since the Renaissance. They are cold and
austere in early April. We dropped our bags in our room and were back in the Fiat
30 minutes later. Ermanno had given us driving gloves, for me, and a scarf, for
Sara, but no map. We didnt need one. The 360-degree view with the top down was
so perfect, so reminiscent of driving scenes in our favorite Fellini and Antonioni
movies, we simply followed the road wherever it went.
An hour later it zigzagged up a steep hill to Castiglion Fiorentino, a medieval
city built on fourth century B.C. Etruscan ruins. We drove until the road deadended in a parking lot, then climbed six flights of stone stairs to the only cafe open
in town.
Hollywood posters and memorabilia from the 1950s hung from the walls, and
a giant picture window looked out at the green spine of the pre-Apennine
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mountains running northwest toward Florence. The bartender set out goat cheese
and figs, tapenade bruschetta and mini slices of pizza and served us $3 glasses of
the best merlot we had the entire trip. The scene was ridiculously picturesque,
straight out of a 1990s romantic comedy. We were both travelers me a writer,
Sara a photographer who had somehow wandered into each other. And here we
were, together, on the greatest journey of our lives.
The International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family states that: More
than an initiation into marital roles, the postindustrial honeymoon is a ritual that
is socially framed as the most romantic juncture in ones life. The honeymoon is
about forming ones self-identity as romantic, and couples make honeymoon
choices as a means to secure their individual and shared romantic identities.
A few days later on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, steps from a store where my
father bought my mother a ring shortly after they were married, we were happy
that we chose to act out Saras story. It came from a dream, and in many ways the
ritual of the honeymoon is a fantasy. It is an escape from your life, job, stress and
every other hassle associated with modern life. It is a chance to be together,
undistracted, and not much else. As the hony moone myth suggests, it might be
your last to do just that.
My uncle, who lived in Italy for years, taught us the Italian word for
newlyweds: sposini. If you are sposini, he said, everyone in the country will treat
you as if it is your birthday. The word came in handy a few days later when we
followed the final leg of our fantasy on a ferry bound for Sicily. We had spent a
couple of days on the Amalfi Coast walking Ravellos gardens that inspired
Richard Wagner, touring Capri and hiking between medieval cliff towns that
Norman kings once ruled and the car rental return was more complicated than
expected. I ended up pulling the sposini card to get a security officer to let me on
the boat, 18 minutes before it departed.
Discount airlines have decreased ferry traffic considerably in Italy, excluding
an exceptionally colorful group of elderly and teenage working-class travelers who
crowded a blue-carpeted lounge bar that night. We ordered negronis and retired to
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the poop deck, where we watched the sparkling lights of Capri slide past the
gunwales.
A blasting horn woke us in our family cabin double bed, bathroom, shower,
TV at 6 a.m. the next day. Mount Pellegrino stood above Palermo harbor,
alongside a half-dozen other forested mountains. The air and sky are different in
Sicily bigger, wider, like Montana in a way. D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda,
lived on the island longer than anywhere else the embattled couple holed up during
Lawrences self-imposed exile.
The raw scenery, laid-back Sicilians and history dating back thousands of
years are exotic and fascinating. Of sailing into Palermo, Lawrence wrote in Sea
and Sardinia: The fantastic peaks behind Palermo show half-ghostly in a halfdark sky. The dawn seems reluctant to come. Our steamer still smokes her
cigarette meaning the funnel-smoke across there. So, one sits still, and crosses
the level space of half-dark water. Masts of sailing-ships, and spars, cluster on the
left, on the undarkening sky.
We walked from the ferry terminal to our hotel, dropped our bags and kept
walking. The marina was crammed with fishing boats and weather-beaten
sailboats. The streets around Dominico Square were as narrow as a refrigerator.
Structures were a pastiche of Norman, Gothic and Greek architecture, most old
and layered with grime.
Beneath the tarnish, Palermo is the kind of city where you stumble across
exquisite things. We almost stepped on a late-Roman mosaic, The Four Seasons,
while looking for a public bathroom. We found the bathroom a half-hour later, in
the largest opera house in Italy.
We saw the 17th-century Quattro Canti, an intersection with sculptures of four
kings of Sicily, one on each corner. The air smelled like lilacs and the ocean in the
Orto botanical garden, and we bought an old canteen at a sprawling flea market in
Piazza Marina. That afternoon we haggled for groceries at the 1,000-year-old
Ballar market, where fishmongers cut crimson slabs of swordfish to order and
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vendors sold blood oranges, pecorino fresco and marble-size capers.

It is bizarre how swiftly the days go by on a vacation, in life. Its nothing
new, but you feel it more on a special trip. I remember my parents talking about
their honeymoon as if it were a thousand years ago. Ours was right here, and there
was some pressure to end it as perfectly as it began.
We drove to Cefal early the next morning for our last few days in Italy. The
headland that the little fishing village is named for lurches up 850 feet from the
center of town and holds the ruins of every culture that ever settled there. We had
rented a tiny apartment with a large deck that looked out on the mile-long beach
extending from town. We made pasta alla norma the first night, a Sicilian classic
with sauted eggplant, penne and ricotta salata, and watched the ocean morph
from blue to indigo to silver to charcoal.
The next day we acted out the final scene of Saras story, packing a picnic and
hiking the headland. Four older men charged us $5 each at the entrance of
Madonie Park. The trail zigzagged to a gate in a tight draw, situated to defend La
Rocca, which was occupied by the Greeks, Syracusians, Romans, Byzantines,
Arabs and Normans. Halfway up the path we saw a pre-Hellenic Temple of Diana
and mounds of clay that were bread ovens at one time. There was a pine forest near
the temple, and after charging to the summit and back we laid out lunch on a
picnic table.
Id filled the old canteen we bought at the flea market with wine, and we
sipped it and ate eggplant sandwiches wrapped in foil while a hawk glided just
above the canopy. The ocean reflected blue light through the pines, and a sea
breeze hissed through tall grass on the mountainside. There were no small furs or
blankets, and we were not going to sleep under the stars as in Saras story. But we
had lived close to the fantasy for a moment and that was enough for us. Love waxes
and wanes. Life is a dream. Sometimes you get to live as if youre in one, too.
If You Go
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Traveling from north to south in Italy requires a plane, train, car and boat.
Venices airport is terrific and typically inexpensive to fly into, and the citys Santa
Lucia and Mestre train stations connect to just about everything south with highspeed and local service. Trains dont go to the Amalfi Coast, so rent a car in Naples.
Most ferries to Sicily leave from Naples as well. Be sure to reserve a sleeper cabin
as most trips are overnight.
Where to Stay
The Belmond Hotel Cipriani (Giudecca 10, belmond.com/hotel-ciprianivenice) is the gold standard in Venice. Four minutes from Piazza San Marco, it is
an oasis of gardens and far from the tourists and people who sell trinkets that mob
the piazza. The Olympic-size saltwater pool is the hotels centerpiece during the
day George Clooney named a few of the drinks at the pool bar and the newly
renovated Oro Restaurant is a hub for foodies and celebrities at night.
The Villa Di Piazzano (Localit Piazzano, C.P. 6, villadipiazzano.com) is in a
15th-century manor house set in the rolling farmland of southeast Tuscany. The
rooms are huge, with 600-year-old beams and modern bathrooms. The hotel offers
a cooking school, alfresco dining on the terrace and hiking trails through the
mountains.
The Palazzo Avino (Via San Giovanni del Toro 28, palazzoavino.com) in
Ravello is worth the drive up the hill from Amalfi. Built in what was once a 12thcentury private villa 1,000 feet above the Tyrrhenian Sea, the hotel has 32
strikingly appointed rooms and 11 suites. Get one with an ocean view and burn off
your love handles at the outdoor gym, then relax in a pair of hot tubs on the roof
deck.
Where to Eat
Trattoria Antiche Carampane (San Polo 1911, antichecarampane.com) is
set close to the Rialto Bridge in Venice, but is well off the tourist map. The tiny
storefront and modest dcor are fitting for a 30-year-old local favorite. The simple
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but perfect scallops and branzino are house specialties, as is the cellar full of local
Veneto wine.
There arent many restaurants like La Mescita (Via degli Alfani, 70; 39-333650-0273) left in Florence. The place is tiny, with 24 seats, and serves plates like
homemade tortellini in a sauce made from fresh veal, cheese, mushrooms and
tomatoes. Steps from Florences Galleria dellAccademia, its not uncommon to see
students sharing a plate of salami toscano, mortadella, pecorino Romano and
prosciutto crudo served with heaps of Tuscan bread.
Going to Cump Cosimo (Via Roma, 44, 39-089-857-156) in Ravello is like
going to your grandmothers. Netta Bottone has been serving traditional Ravello
dishes in the 300-year-old cantina for more than six decades. The lasagna and
misto a pesto with whatever pasta Netta feels like making are out of this world
and the salads are fresh and feed the whole table. Meats come from Nettas own
butcher shop next door and tiramis might be on the house, if youre nice.
Porter Fox is the editor of the literary travel magazine Nowhere.
A version of this article appears in print on July 12, 2015, on page TR1 of the New York edition with the
headline: The Best Days of Our Lives.
2015 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/travel/a-honeymoon-through-it&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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We danced at midnight in Venice, motored through Tuscany and made

JULY 10, 2015