WHEN IN ITALY…
RAVEL OFTEN FEELS like a dream—surreal, exciting, demanding, and unfamiliar. Consequently, it can take some time to truly give in and comprehend that your life, momentarily, has taken on the rhythms of its new surroundings. In Italy, where a trip is about living la dolce vita, it feels like you’re not on a holiday so much as on the set of an elaborate movie, where men are dressed in suits, the colours are saturated in the afternoon sun, and everything from the architecture to the food is waiting for its close-up shot. It’s only when you wake up and step out onto the balcony that the reality of it hits: the Italian sun blazing down on you, Mount Etna smoking in
