We Are in Italy (But We Are Not at the Big Wedding)

There's also the fact that we weren't invited. There's also the fact that we wouldn't go. There's also the fact that we definitely would have.

Trigger Alert: this is travel porn on airline miles disguised as travel porn.

Melanie and I are in Tuscany. That’s Italy if you don’t get out much. Italia, of course, if you do.

If I look out from my Room with a View, I can see Melanie floating in an aquamarine pool. Your correspondent writes to you from an obscenely beautiful, recently renovated castle in Tuscany. Undoubtedly, the locals call it a castello, but we haven’t met any yet.

One of our two Da Vinci length dining room tables is situated outside. We have a flower bed where butterflies hover over the lavender like Snow White’s bluebirds. (I’ve tried to capture it in video, but it’s not the same as being here.) The ceilings are so high, Melanie called them “Sistine-like.” Not everything is perfetto: the pool-side grass is too green, and you can make out the outlines of freshly-laid sod.

Are you still here?

Then, I continue.

In the late afternoon we drove in from Rome. We had pizza off of the highway and a charming conversation with an Autogrill worker who described the pizza in almost impeccable English. We arrived during the magic hour light of sunset shaded only by the tall stands of cypress trees, just past the vineyard on the bordering hillside. Surely, Roman soldiers once encamped there.

Last night, at our dining room table, there was Under a Tuscan Sun laughter. We had fresh pasta. Bright red tomatoes were carved into thick slabs adorned with delicate leaves of basil descending as delicately as autumn leaves over the spaghetti. A new friend who reminded me of Stanley Tucci showed me how to twist the pasta as you settle it which is as aesthetically pleasing to watch as to eat. Bezosian.

In our ensuite bedroom, the underground spring water flows softly over the skin, but we brought something to remineralize it. There is a bidet available if, per caso, we want to take it for a spin.

This morning there is laughter coming from the kitchen. Someone doesn’t know exactly how to use the cute coffee maker. Even the discomforts are charming! You have no idea.

We feel a kinship to the group that has taken over Venice where the More or Less Richest Man in the World¹ celebrates his Festa di matrimonio in Venice with a glorious thousand man choir of Gondolier Singers and the pigeons of the San Marco bleached to marble white. Ah, Le Nozze de Bezos!

This is not another basta post to the sfarzo and eccesso. (from left to right: “enough”, “extravagance,” and “excess.”) This is kinship writ small. Anyway, we were not invited to Venice, so we are the little people making do. Haha!

*

With a band of fellow New Yorkers who have all chipped in together for this palazzo, the cost of our home for the week is less per night than when we took the kids to Disney World, so put your pitchforks down. In fact, it was less per night than the Lightning Line cheat the crowds passes.

We are staying at the “Motel 6 of Tuscany.” This is the equivalent of a fraternity renting a Jersey Shore beach home. Broken out over several credit cards, the whole thing becomes deliciously affordable.

Because it turns out, there’s a secret:

It’s called “villa math.” All you need are twenty-seven friends. If you don’t count the people we don’t know, then it’s only five. It took us thirty years of marriage, but Melanie and I finally reached our fifth friend, and this long-awaited trip became possible. We hoarded them like frequent flyer miles to make this work. Punti fedeltà di American Airlines!

Also, there is an extra room we didn’t fill. If we had, it would have been cheaper than staying in Brooklyn.

With posts like this, you probably find it hard to believe it took us so long to make that many friends. And with posts like this, it is very likely we dip, once again, below the five-friend mark after this week together, but right now, bambini, we’re in heaven.

Cinema Paradiso I call it.

I have to run, we’re off to Siena for the James Bond horse race.

Afterwards, join us for virtual dinner on the terrace at 10pm your time.

Ciao. (That’s both hello and goodbye in Italiano it turns out.)

Honestly, a group trip opens up a whole other world.

Mrs. Bezos Nathan.

On vacation, I live in a clothing store. My wife dresses me like a little doll. Clothes are laid out twice a day. Once in the morning. Once before dinner. I put them on, do a spin to make sure whatever needs to be right is. Sometimes this involves second or even third options. Others remark on how well her husband is turned out. It’s the secret of matrimony: “wear this.”

1. The rankings may have changed by the time you’re reading this.