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Lisa Marie Basile's avatar

I should also mention, landing in Amsterdam this past new year's day, we also encountered wind shear and did two go around's. Never saw so much violent shaking/vomit douse an airplane. Did we talk about this on IG? Glad you made it through!

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Grazie per questo. This is so dreamy, and so beautiful. I adore reading travel/life/reflections like this piece. (Also love that you visited Transylvania). I can't wait to read more.

Adored this whole paragraph like a dream I fell into: "So we didn’t make it back to Italy but now I’ve been thinking of the lighter side of my time there. The months spent in Florence and in Mussolini’s summer house on Lake Garda studying Italian (funded by the Istituto Italiano), taking my cappuccino and brioche at the bar, eating ice cream late at night with friends, piazzas brimming with life, cycling through Tuscany and Umbria, the smell of basil in the hot air, the hotel room curtains wavering in the sea breeze in Riomaggiore. Visits there as a child, with family and a friend. Bowls of pasta in the summer heat. Dancing to Alizée with other children my age, and not knowing what the lyrics meant, not knowing what the children were saying. A mangey kitten peering at me from behind a column of the Colosseum – I wished I could take it home. Watching St Mark’s Square fill up with water at dusk and thinking that one day all this would be underwater. The fairground in the middle of nowhere that felt straight out of a Goosebumps novel: my parents parked up the campervan somewhere, at night, and there it was, empty but loud and garish with those intense lights. Eagerly my friend and I hopped on a rollercoaster and the conductor wouldn’t let us off, cackling as we went again and again, becoming dizzier and more nauseated. Midnight Mass at Christmas. Siestas. Riding vespas through sleeping towns. Carnival in Busseto. Reading Leopardi’s Canti and their dark mood colouring my solitary walks. A late-night dip in the naturally thermal waters of Saturnia. Labyrinthine ancient cities and towns. The beauty of the Amalfi coast and Capri. The sadness I felt at Vesuvius, aged eleven, remembering that we could lose all of this in the blink of an eye. Romanticising about that love that could move the sun, and all the other stars. That summer with good friends, wandering around Rome and Herculaneum, where magical things just seemed to happen. That thunderstorm that shook the airport on our way to Athens! 2 am visits to the secret Florence bakery that sold its freshly baked pastries to those in the know. In Italy, Brazil and India, I rediscovered my appetite where for years I had felt only disgust. Italy is where I learned to properly cook: pasta allo zafferano, minestrone di verdure, pasta e fagioli, melanzana parmigiana, focaccia, tiramisu – and to enjoy salads dressed in olive oil and vinegar – and fresh fruit: juicy peaches and nectarines, watermelon – and to drink good wine. In the past I dreamed in Italian. I found in the language and its gestures a more confident expression."

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