Panarea

Panarea is the “chic” island, although there’s nothing immediately chic about the way it rises jaggedly out of the sea from a distance.

We’ve managed to sail from Salina – there’s not much wind, but there is enough of a steady breeze from the right direction that we keep moving along at a decent if not exactly fast pace. No motor, no noise except for the hypnotizing sound of waves against the boat’s hull. By the time we need to lower the sails, the island now looming directly in front of us, I’ve read most of a novel and we’ve eaten nearly an entire container of very ripe cherries.

We head directly to Cala Junco, a wild little cove on Panarea’s southern tip. The last time we were here, three years ago, there were so many jellyfish drifting through the water in venomous tentacled clouds that I refused to so much as dip a toe in. This time: No jellyfish. The water is perfect, and I waste no time getting the paddle board into the water to explore the innermost part of the cove, off-limits to boats.

The plan was to move the boat in front of the town for the night, but as the sun starts to sink lower and the other boats in the cove start to head out, we decide to stay. The light is golden and the peace is incredible. We enjoy an aperitivo sitting on the prow as the sun sets, and then I prepare a tartare from a slab of fresh tuna that I bought from the pescheria on Salina that morning. Raw tuna, red onion, capers, olive oil, flakey salt and a squeeze of fresh lemon, nothing more.

In the morning, we do move the boat in front of the town and are immediately glad that we spent the night in the tranquility of Cala Junco. As soon as we round the corner, it gets busier: Villas cascade down the hillside, little day boats dart around, and the fields of mooring buoys are filled with sailboats and catamarans. We manage to find space to anchor and take the dinghy to shore.

This is the chic Panarea: Everything is curated, perfectly maintained. Golf carts whip through the narrow whitewashed streets, bringing tourists and their suitcases to and from hotels. There is brightly coloured bougainvillea everywhere, which I love. I drag my husband through the town’s labyrinth of streets (he is less interested in seeing and photographing every single bougainvillea than I am, unfortunately), we stop for a refreshing pistachio granita, and then head back to the boat. It’s too hot to stay on land for too long.

We set off towards Stromboli, making a stop at Basiluzzo – a small rocky island with spectacular cliffs and the most enticingly blue water.

Stromboli

There is something mysterious and unsettling about sailing towards Stromboli, a perfectly cone-shaped, very active volcano that spews smoke and lava almost continuously. The island is forbidding: There are no sheltered anchorages if the wind picks up. One of the two towns is so isolated that it’s only accessible by boat and a steep staircase. A huge swath of the island is off-limits, a giant blackened chute that shuttles lava and rocks from the smoking crater directly down into the sea below. As we sail past, I watch as still-smoldering boulders, spat out of the volcano minutes earlier, bounce downwards until they’re swallowed up by the sea. Every few minutes, the volcano belches out a cloud of particularly dense, dark smoke.

We anchor in front of Stromboli’s main town, which looks calm and lovely despite the ominous little cloud of smoke still visible at the top of the island. To go ashore, we have to drag the dinghy up onto a rocky beach, tying it up around a boulder that looks like it emerged from the volcano not too long ago. The town has a strange energy to it: Less curated, more wild, with alleys that branch off the main street, meander upwards, and then end abruptly against the steep side of the volcano. The main mode of transportation appears to be by Piaggio Ape, the little workhorse three-wheeled flatbed trucks that can fit down the narrowest streets.

Dinner is at a breezy restaurant with a view down to the water. As the sun disappears, we eat various crudi di pesce and I nearly scrape my plate clean after my pasta, chewy curved noodles with cubes of smoked local tuna and that same incredibly delicious cheese that I encountered on Salina. Afterwards, to find our way back down to the beach where we left the dinghy, we have to use our phones’ flashlights to illuminate pitch-black streets: Apparently, streetlights are not a thing on Stromboli.

Then, at 4:00am sharp the next morning, it’s time to get up. The plan is to sail in front of the sciara del fuoco – the lava chute – in complete darkness to see the bursts of lava as it emerges from the crater. The darkness seems all-enveloping as we raise the anchor, so dark that it’s even hard to make out the boats anchored near us. Suddenly, as we’re slipping between two other boats, I spot a spurt of brilliant orange sparks visible high above the town.

The volcano is like clockwork: Every ten or fifteen minutes, a jet of lava shoots out of the crater, cascading gently back down in a shower of molten rock particles. It’s surreal: There’s inky blackness all around us, the sea is flat calm, we’re the only boat out, and we’re slowly bobbing past an erupting volcano.

Filicudi

By the time the sun rises we’re already on our way to Filicudi, Stromboli receding dramatically on the horizon with silhouetted black clouds of smoke billowing overhead. There’s not even a hint of a breeze and the sea is like glass, so we keep the sails down. Two moka pots of coffee and a couple of very relaxing hours later, Filicudi is looming in front of us.

This island is a challenge for anchoring: The water gets deep, fast, and the bottom is all rocks – big, irregular rocks, the kind that grab anchors and chains and hold onto them when it’s time to go. But Filicudi’s coastline is gorgeous, with sea caves and sparkling cerulean water, so we circle around and around, squinting into the water in an attempt to identify the least risky place to drop the anchor.

We end up spending several relaxing hours anchored beside a seventy-meter-tall sea stack poking up from the water like an accusatory finger – apparently the remnants of the core of an ancient volcano that last erupted some 40,000 years ago. Now, in calm weather, it’s a beautiful place to snorkel and enjoy the crystal clear water. Later, we watch as the boat beside us has trouble pulling up its anchor, which has wedged itself between two large rocks. And when we decide to leave, there are a few anxiety-inducing minutes where the windlass comes to an abrupt halt, the anchor chain tense, the anchor clearly not lifting off the bottom. Thankfully reversing the boat, hard, releases the anchor, and we’re free to leave.

For the evening, we decide not to risk anchoring and opt for a mooring buoy in front of Pecorini a Mare, a fisherman’s village. It’s a tiny handful of whitewashed and pastel-coloured buildings around a small, rocky beach strewn with wooden fishing boats, and the vibe is a cross between grizzled fisherman and hippy chic – which feels like it shouldn’t make sense and yet it does.

When we go to shore, we tie the dingy up to an old concrete pier and join the crowd that’s gathered to sip glasses of crisp white wine and celebrate an art gallery opening. There is a lot of very tanned skin, effortless linen, and eclectically-shaped eyewear. Then we get an aperitivo at the Hotel Sirena – I am convinced that no visit to Filicudi is complete without an aperitivo here – where they’ve set up little stools and low tables in front of the restaurant’s shady veranda, the perfect spot for people-watching. Later, as the sun sets, dinner is a pizza in a garden with a view of the sea. It’s our last dinner before heading back to mainland Sicily, and it’s bittersweet – it’s been a perfect week, and leaving behind the slow, laid-back rhythms of the Aeolean islands and life on a sailboat will be difficult.

I know we’ll be back again.

Welcome to Notes from Rome, a place for me to write about my everyday life, which happens to take place in Italy. There’s not really a specific focus to this newsletter, but you can expect personal anecdotes, thoughts on food, some recommendations for things I like, and some complaints about things I don’t like. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy hearing about, please subscribe (it’s free)!

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Here in Rome, this summer has felt more relentlessly hot and humid than usual – which is saying something, since summers here always feel hot and humid. And while stores are already turning their attention towards fall, I want to remind you all that we’re not even through July yet, which means there’s still a sizable chunk of summer left to go before anything even remotely resembling fall weather hits this city.

I wanted to share three essentials and three guilty pleasures that are getting me through this season:

(Also, these are not sponsored in any way!)

Portable fan

No, it doesn’t look elegant like whipping out an elaborately-patterned hand fan does, but you also won’t work up even more of a sweat fanning yourself. There are thousands of portable purse-sized battery-powered fans available on the internet and they’re mostly interchangeable, but I’m pleased with this one because a) it folds to sit nicely on a table, allowing you to pretend there’s actually a cool breeze during your otherwise intolerably humid outdoor dinner, and b) at full speed, it’s powerful enough to generate actual wind, not just a feeble breeze that barely makes a difference.

Insect bite healer

Mosquitos are unfortunately very much present during summer in Italy (and spring, and fall, and yes, even into winter these last few years), and they seem to prefer feasting on me over anyone else around. I read about this “insect bite healer” on a Substack (sorry, can’t remember which one!) a year ago and was skeptical of the amount of enthusiasm the author used to describe the device but bought one anyhow just to see what the hype was about. Let me tell you: It works! The concept is that you briefly apply heat to your insect bites, which magically stops them from itching after a few seconds. The downside is that you are basically very quickly voluntarily burning yourself – it does actually hurt, but in a tolerable way – but the upside is that you don’t need to spend the rest of the evening frantically scratching yourself.

Bionike Defence Sun sunscreen

I truly despise feeling sticky from sunscreen – but the sun in Italy is strong, and as someone whose skin colour ranges from “pale” to “very slightly less pale” depending on the season, sunscreen is not optional for me. I’ve tried a bunch of different brands over the years and have disliked most of them for various reasons, namely feeling too greasy, having too heavy of a perfume, or not resisting a bit of water (or sweat). This cream sunscreen (there are spray versions too) from Italian skincare brand Bionike is scent-free, doesn’t leave a white cast, and despite resisting multiple dips in the sea or long, sweaty bike rides, it feels surprisingly dry and non-sticky to the touch. As an added bonus, it’s not as eye-wateringly expensive as some of the European brands.

Lemonsoda

This, over a bunch of ice cubes, is possibly the single most refreshing thing you can drink on a hot summer day. It’s a sparkling lemonade made with the juice of Sicilian lemons and it’s actually got some lemon pulp in it too, so it has a kind of cloudy appearance in the glass that makes it look as though it could be freshly-squeezed. It’s not overly sweet, so you don’t feel like you’re drinking pure sugar (Cedrata Tassoni, I’m looking at you). Lemonsoda is my go-to when I want a non-alcoholic aperitivo.

This recipe for blueberry muffins, but turned into a cake

This is a straightforward recipe, but the lemon ginger sugar topping takes it to a different level. This recipe is delicious as muffins but becomes even more irresistible as a cake – more surface area for that crunchy topping, maybe? This recipe is perfect for breakfast or as a not-too-sweet finish to a summer barbecue. As a practical note, to transform the recipe into a cake, I reserve some of the blueberries to scatter over the top of the batter, and I toss the rest of the blueberries in a bit of flour to help stop them from sinking to the bottom. I also always add slightly more blueberries than the recipe calls for. The baking time also needs to be adjusted to around an hour, give or take.

Highlander “Tomato or Nothing” chips

Look, I really enjoy potato chips. I eat healthy most of the time, but when the craving strikes I will not say no to a little bowl of chips. I tend to rotate between favourite flavours, but San Carlo’s Highlander chips in “Tomato or Nothing” is perfect for summer. They’re ridged and extra crunchy, which I love, and the flavour is more decisive than the San Carlo “Pomodorini di Stagione” (seasonal cherry tomato) chips, a previous favourite. I feel vaguely ridiculous including chips in a “summer essentials” roundup, but truly, a bowl of these, accompanied by a Lemonsoda and, ideally, a view of the sea, is an elite summer experience.

Welcome to Notes from Rome, a place for me to write about my everyday life, which happens to take place in Italy. There’s not really a specific focus to this newsletter, but you can expect personal anecdotes, thoughts on food, some recommendations for things I like, and some complaints about things I don’t like. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy hearing about, please subscribe (it’s free)!

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We arrive at the marina at 3:30pm, tired after eight and a half hours of travel plus an entire hour lost in Villa San Giovanni, the dystopian port town near the bottom of Calabria where the ferries leave to cross the Straight of Messina over to Sicily. The car is packed in the kind of specific Tetris we’ve perfected for sailing trips: Suitcases, a giant stand-up paddle board taking up more than its fair share of space, flippers, snorkels, and a week’s worth of groceries, meticulously planned, slotted into the remaining space.

There’s a certain energy to a marina on a summer Saturday afternoon – when boat charter check-ins happen – and the Capo d’Orlando marina is no exception. People are dragging wagons of supplies up and down the docks. Staff members are wielding contracts and check-lists and walkie-talkies. Everyone is checking equipment, getting settled, passing heavy cases of bottled water over the watery gap between the dock and the boat. The humidity is through the roof.

We’re finally ready to go. This is potentially the most nerve-wracking moment: After nearly a year, do we even remember what we’re doing? How and when exactly will this specific boat’s particularities1 reveal themselves to us? This is the seventh sailing trip we’ve done with just the two of us – my husband has a patente nautica senza limiti dalla costa (boating licence without limits) – and by now we’ve accumulated enough experience to feel like we know what we’re doing… most of the time.

Vulcano

The sun has just set when we arrive at Spiaggia dell’Asino, a black sand beach on the southern tip of Vulcano, the closest of the Aeolian Islands to mainland Sicily. Somewhere between the marina and the island I’ve changed out of my sweaty t-shirt and shorts and into a bikini, my uniform for the week. We anchor between two catamarans – I don’t like anchoring in the dark since it’s impossible to see what the anchor is actually landing on, but thankfully we feel the anchor bite immediately.

The next morning, we sip coffee with a view of a lighthouse before sailing farther up the island’s west coast to the Grotta del Cavallo, a sea cave flanked by coves and towering rocks. This is the remote part of the island, accessible only by boat, and it feels very different from the populated part. We haul the dinghy off the boat’s prow and into the water. We get the outboard motor mounted onto the dinghy, ready for sea cave explorations (this is more work than it appears to be – everything on a boat is more work than it appears to be). We extract the stand-up paddle board from its sack and get it pumped up; a workout. I prepare an insalata caprese, accompanied by a glass of cold white wine and a mid-lunch leap into the sea, and then the full vacation mood clicks into place.

Lipari

We are lucky: The area’s prevailing winds, normally from the west, are almost completely calm. This unlocks the island’s wild west coast for us, which, without any marinas or protected anchorages, is often too rough and wavy to explore by boat.

The distance between Vulcano and Lipari is short. We anchor near the Faraglioni – steep rocks that poke out of the sea, carved by relentless waves and wind into dramatic forms – for a few hours while we swim and explore around the coastline. Then we move to our anchorage for the night, a broad cove bordered by a rocky beach and steep scrubby hills. Most of the day boats have left already and there are only a few sailboats anchored for the evening.

I take a shower – is there anything better than the feeling of being freshly showered after the stickiness of sunscreen and salt all day? – and start preparing dinner. The sea is glassy, the breeze is warm, and as the sun starts to sink lower in the sky, the whole bay turns gold and then rusty orange. And then there’s the kind of inky darkness that swallows up everything; only pinpricks of soft light come from the other boats and the sea of stars overhead.

The next morning we move farther up the coast to another secluded cove that looks like it’s been bitten out of the side of the island. There are sea caves, a tiny rocky island, and the kind of intensely turquoise water that’s impossible not to dive into. We’re the only boat anchored here, a rarity in these islands during the summer, and it feels like we’ve stumbled on something secret.

Salina

Is this my favourite island? It’s nearly impossible to choose – they’re all so unique in their own way – but there’s something special about Salina. It rises out of the sea in two tall volcanic cones, lushly green in the way the other islands aren’t, and there’s a prehistoric feeling to its form.

Our first stop is Pollara, where ancient fishermens’ warehouses built into the rock at the bottom of a steeply zig-zagging path provide swimmers with a sort of launching point into the sea. There’s so much to take in, visually, that I hardly know where to look: A rocky archway, sheer cliffs, ancient lava rock twisting into grotesque forms, water the colour of gemstones, and that green volcanic cone looming over everything. It’s hot and the air is still – leaping into that water feels better than just about anything else.

Then we sail up around the north end of the island, past the town of Malfa perched high on a cliff, past vineyards suspended on hillsides and homes just meters from dropping into the sea. We anchor in front of Santa Marina Salina, near the entrance to the marina. We’ll be having dinner at a restaurant in the town, which means taking the dinghy to shore, and its easier to tie it up in the marina than pulling it up onto a rocky beach.

The dinghy is always a challenge: It needs to be untied, positioned alongside the boat’s swim platform and loaded up with sandals and my purse (in a waterproof bag, lest it end up in the water) before we can heave ourselves into it, start the motor, and make our way to the dock. I have chosen to wear a nearly floor-length sundress, which felt light and chic as I was putting it on but immediately proved awkward for climbing in and out of the dinghy and then scrambling up to the dock, soaking wet rope in hand, to tie the dinghy to a giant rusty loop of metal. Through all of this, I am trying – and failing – to not sweat profusely in the humid evening air. It’s been 72 hours since I’ve stood on solid ground, and the street immediately feels like it’s tilting and rolling under my feet.

The town of Santa Marina Salina is perfect. It’s tiny and colourful, full of places to eat and shops selling linen dresses and ceramics with whimsical sea-themed designs. We make our way down to a lemon-shaped kiosk on the beach for an aperitivo with a view of Stromboli on the horizon, then back into the town for dinner at a restaurant with tables under fairy lights and gently swaying wicker lamps. The wine is crisp, cold and mineral and tastes exactly like it came from the side of a volcano. My pasta arrives covered in grated ricotta salata infornata and it’s a revelation – I know I need to eat as much of this cheese as possible before the week is finished.

After dinner, we head back to the marina, somehow manage to get into the dinghy without ending up in the water, and make our way back to the boat – which is surprisingly difficult to find, given that it’s pitch black and the wind has shifted all the boats around their anchors so that they’re pointing in the opposite direction now.

In the morning, we head to land again. I insist on stopping for a second breakfast, an almond granita and cappuccino, and then we rent a motorino for the morning, navigating the island’s hilly, constantly twisting roads to Malfa (where I eat another granita, this one pistachio and accompanied by an excellent brioche), then to Pollara, and then between the two volcanic cones and down to Rinella before turning around and repeating the route in reverse, back to Santa Marina Salina and back to the boat.

Coming soon in part two: Panarea, Stromboli and Filicudi.

Welcome to Notes from Rome, a place for me to write about my everyday life, which happens to take place in Italy. There’s not really a specific focus to this newsletter, but you can expect personal anecdotes, thoughts on food, some recommendations for things I like, and some complaints about things I don’t like. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy hearing about, please subscribe (it’s free)!

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There’s a video that has been making its rounds on social media in which a wild boar is shown trotting nonchalantly down a city sidewalk in broad daylight, making its way past shops and apartment entrances. Behind it, decidedly less nonchalantly, follows a vigile urbano (traffic policeman) looking very out of his element. Phone in hand, he lopes awkwardly after the boar. It’s unclear what his end goal is – heroic singlehanded capture? To escort the boar out of the neighbourhood?

The neighbourhood in question is, in fact, my own neighbourhood. And the wild boar? I’m pretty sure we’ve come face-to-face before.

It was around 5:50am, the sun was just about to peek over the horizon, and I was on my bike, still half-asleep, heading down one of the main roads that leads out of my area and towards a bike path. I had stopped at a red light when I spotted some movement at the side of the road and, to my surprise, an enormous wild boar – grey and bristly, tail held high – made its way across the the crosswalk in front of me, turned, and meandered off down the sidewalk. It seemed shockingly at home in such an urban setting.

Just a couple of days ago – once again on my bike – I heard rustling and snorting beside me in the tall grass bordering the bike path and in the time it took me to pedal past and glance behind me, a wild boar was standing in the middle of the path. It did not look friendly. It looked, in fact, quite aggressive.

Both of these boar spottings were well within the city limits. Boars are a dime a dozen in the countryside – there’s a reason pasta al cinghiale is so common on restaurant menus – but have been making their way farther and farther into the city over the past several years, escorted in by the jungle-like greenery on the fringes of the city (Monte Mario is apparently full of them) and then tempted into staying by the bounty of ample and often overflowing dumpsters.

The boars aren’t the only fauna in this city. Besides the pigeons and the occasional rat – urban classics – Rome is home to flocks of acid green parrots that streak across the sky and gather in trees, squawking noisily the whole time. As the story goes, the parrots (which are not at all native to Italy and not normally found in cities) originated from a pair that escaped from captivity, found Rome’s parks to be an acceptable alternative to their native habitat, and proliferated. Now, right in the center of the city, you can look out your window and see three or four highlighter-coloured parrots shoot past, or spot a couple of them clinging on to the antennas that sprout from Roman roofs.

And then there are the seagulls. Louder than the parrots, dirtier than the rats and the pigeons, and more menacing than the wild boars, Roman seagulls are not the gulls you might be used to seeing. They don’t live off of fish and seafood (in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one pluck a fish out of the Tevere) although they certainly wouldn’t hesitate to steal a piece of seafood off of your plate. Roman seagulls have evolved; they are massive, with muscular bodies and particularly beady orange eyes. They are flying trash receptacles, absolutely indiscriminate in what they will eat – and they appear to thrive on the contents of the trash bags they regularly rip open and drag around on the street.

I have watched as a seagull swallowed an entire take-out bag of fast food (bag included, obviously), I’ve seen a seagull absolutely obliterate the remains of an aperitivo, which involved downing entire toothpicks, and I’ve witnessed a particularly large seagull flying by with a whole chicken breast clamped in its beak. I’ve even seen (and I’m sorry, this is disgusting) a seagull demolishing a dead rat on top of someone’s parked car.

If this all sounds somewhat chaotic, that’s because it is. Somewhere between the layers of history and everyday life that make up this city, wildlife has decided that it belongs here too. You can leave your apartment in the morning expecting nothing more than a commute from one point to another, and then you can find yourself stopped at a traffic light while a wild boar crosses in front of you and a flock of parrots disappears over the rooftops.

Welcome to Notes from Rome, a place for me to write about my everyday life, which happens to take place in Italy. There’s not really a specific focus to this newsletter, but you can expect personal anecdotes, thoughts on food, some recommendations for things I like, and some complaints about things I don’t like. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy hearing about, please subscribe (it’s free)!

Subscribe now

About a month and a half ago I decided to finally tackle a challenge that I’ve been resolutely avoiding for nearly fourteen years: getting an Italian driver’s licence. In near-heroic levels of procrastination, I had chosen to avoid getting behind the wheel of a car in Italy1 rather than going through the somewhat arduous process of obtaining an Italian licence. There’s a whole handful of reasons why I put this off so long – I haven’t really needed to drive in day-to-day life here, and driving within Rome is actual insanity, plus my husband is generally happy to handle the driving whenever we actually need to use the car – but eventually, I started running out of excuses. It was time to get my licence.

Like any bureaucratic process in Italy, there are a series of hoops to jump through before you can actually sign up for the theory test, the first step in the licensing process. You need to show a bunch of documents, obviously. You need to go get the photo that will be used on the licence. Then you need a form from your medico di base (family doctor) certifying that you don’t have any medical conditions that might make you a danger on the road – but afterwards you also need to go to the medico legale (the… legal doctor? I feel like this profession is not directly translatable) where you fill out another form, suspiciously similar to the one your doctor already provided, self-certifying that (yet again) you don’t have any conditions that might make you a danger on the road.

The actual visit with the medico legale lasted all of two minutes, wherein the doctor showed off his knowledge of global geography by asking me if Victoria, Canada (the birthplace listed on my documents) was in fact in New Zealand (not the last time I checked) before asking me to cover my right eye with my right hand and read out the three letters he pointed to on an eye chart. Same thing with the left hand and the left eye. And then I was deemed officially healthy enough to proceed to booking the theory exam.

The thing about the theory exam is that it’s purposely designed to be difficult. There are 7,147 potential true/false questions that can randomly be selected for the 30-question exam, and they often use unnecessarily technical terms and weirdly complex grammar in what I can only assume is a concerted effort to make as many people fail as possible. There are also images of the most complex intersections possible, the kind that would immediately send a Roman driver into a head-on collision, that require you to figure out the right-of-way. While some questions are straightforward and would make sense for a new driver to know, others are… less useful.

Some standout questions I’ve encountered while studying include (translated from Italian) the vaguely ridiculous “Eating foods that are difficult to digest can reduce alertness and increase reaction times” (true, and of course the Italians will find a way to discuss food as part of a driving test), “On very steep downhill slopes, it is advisable to drive with the handbrake partially engaged” (false, and I would be concerned by anyone who thinks otherwise), and “To drive a passenger car towing a trailer with a maximum authorized mass of 2,000 kg, where the combined maximum authorized mass is 4,500 kg, it is necessary to hold a Category BE driving licence” (true, but is it really necessary to know all these details?).

Anyhow, I was resolute: I was only going to do this driving test once. Failing (in front of a cohort of 18-year-old Italians hungry for their first real taste of independence) was not an option. I studied with an enthusiasm I didn’t even apply to my university exams, powering through practice tests on the driving school app on my iPad with a dedication my husband described as “surprising”. I started dreaming in recurring phrases from the quiz questions (“Allorché di notte, su strada extraurbana, incrociamo un veicolo con fari a luce abbagliante accesi…”).

The exam was last Friday. It took place at the motorizzazione out on the Via Salaria – a location that somewhat ironically is nearly impossible to reach if you can’t drive there – in a building straight out of the 1970s, dilapidated in the way that nearly all public administration buildings in Rome are. I waited for my name to be called in the shade of a towering pine tree that kept dripping black-tinged sap onto me (the alternative was full 38-degree sunlight), then was ushered into the warehouse-like exam room.

It took twice as long to get everyone set up for the exam as it did to actually take the exam. There were long-winded explanations about how to navigate the touch-screen test interface, there was a metal detector waved haphazardly over everyone (apparently to prevent hidden cheating devices and other such electronics) along with dire warnings about the consequences of cheating, and then an authentication process involving the criminally ugly photo I had to submit at the beginning of the process showing up, massive, on the screen in front of me. Finally, the first quiz question flashed onto the screen: an image of the road sign depicting a pine tree going up in flames. “This sign”, stated the question underneath the image, “can be accompanied by an integrative panel describing the distance of the area susceptible to fires”. I clicked True. The exam was officially underway.

Reader, I passed. I made one error2, which annoys me far more than it should. But I passed, which means I am now the proud holder of the foglio rosa, basically a learner’s permit. I can now take to the streets of Rome, provided a licensed adult (that would be my husband) is beside me. The fact that I got my British Columbia driver’s licence way back in the early 2000s is both comforting and irrelevant – I know how to drive a car, but do I know how to drive in Rome? We’ll see.

Summer in Rome: Sometimes, under an unrelenting sun, the sidewalk starts to melt. I can feel it giving slightly under my feet; my sandals leave behind perfect indented footprints that slowly flatten out after I walk away. Small objects get swallowed up entirely – in the portion of sidewalk immediately outside our building’s front door, I can just barely see the outline of a key and some loose change fossilized in the sticky black tar.

Sweat becomes an integral, unavoidable part of everyday life. I walk to the market, it’s early enough that it’s not really that hot out yet, but I’ve underestimated the humidity inside. As I drop ripe tomatoes into a brown paper bag, I can feel it: Beads of sweat sprouting on my nose and above my lip, that prickling sensation across my chest. By the time I haul my wheeled carrello a few blocks back to the apartment building, drag it up the foyer staircase and maneuver it into and then out of the tiny, airless elevator, I feel like I need another shower.

Venturing outside between the hours of 10am and 7pm is avoided whenever possible – errands, exercise and socialization are all crammed into the early morning or wait until the evening. In between, at home: shutters closed, windows closed, air conditioning on. The apartment becomes a cave, cool and dark.

In the late afternoon, sometimes a storm rolls through. The sky darkens as the humidity builds until the air feels like it has a physical weight to it, thunder rumbles and then the wind picks up out of nowhere, whipping leaves off trees and making the umbrellas outside restaurants flap and shudder. Afterwards, there’s a break from the heat, and parked cars are left covered in a fine layer of yellowish sand – brought in from the Sahara with the scirocco wind, then deposited over the city with the rain.

Other unmistakable signs of summer in Rome, in case the heat isn’t telling enough on its own: In the morning, before the sun rises, the courtyard explodes with loud, exuberant birdsong as a pack of swifts swoop around the space and whip gleefully past the windows with just centimeters to spare. Laundry seems to dry, stiff and crunchy, in minutes. A truck selling massive watermelons has occupied part of the sidewalk across from the market; the market fills up with mountains of zucchini. And every weekend the city empties out – the Romans head to the sea, predictably, to roast themselves under the sun and eat spaghetti alle vongole before heading back to the boiling hot city. Traffic jams on the way out, traffic jams on the way back in.

Does it sound like I hate summer?

I don’t, but the relationship is complicated. I love the idea of summer, the way it seems to imply a loosening of routines and an escape from the usual. I love flowy sundresses and bare legs, outdoor dinners, just about any food involving stone fruit, and the way everything seems to look more cinematic in summer morning light. I love the sea, boats and islands. I love the way summer in the countryside smells and sounds – warm grass, hot pine tree, cicadas buzzing overhead – although I emphatically do not like the way summer in the city smells.

The thing is that I don’t really tolerate the heat very well. It makes me irritable and impatient in a way that really doesn’t work with that flowy, easy, romantic mental image of summer. I can put on the sundress, but when I’m a sweaty, flustered mess on the verge of snapping at the next person who crosses my path, it feels like something’s not really working.

The most obvious solution is to escape, to get out of the city for the entire summer and then come back, refreshed, in the fall. Unfortunately this is not possible or practical for a whole variety of reasons – and besides, when huge chunks of the continent are going through their own extreme heatwaves, where exactly do you escape to? I haven’t yet figured out how to make spending an entire summer on a boat or a remote Mediterranean island into a reality.

So, other than shorter getaways whenever possible, this is where you’ll find me: At home, under the air conditioner, waiting until the sun sinks below the horizon to get out and do anything (and preparing to sweat heavily while doing it). Summer – such a fun season, right?

Welcome to Notes from Rome, a place for me to write about my everyday life, which happens to take place in Italy. There’s not really a specific focus to this newsletter, but you can expect personal anecdotes, thoughts on food, some recommendations for things I like, and some complaints about things I don’t like. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy hearing about, please subscribe (it’s free)!

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Notes from Rome is a place for me to write about my everyday life, which happens to take place in Italy. There’s not really a specific focus to this newsletter, but you can expect personal anecdotes, thoughts on food, some recommendations for things I like, and some complaints about things I don’t like. What you shouldn’t expect are Italy travel tips or guides – there are other people who do this really well, but it’s not my space.

A bit about me: Fourteen years ago, I moved from Victoria, Canada to Rome, Italy. It was a fairly impulsive decision, as far as major life changes go, but I’ve never regretted it. Which is not to say that it hasn’t been challenging at times – Rome is not an easy city to live in. Since arriving, I’ve gained a firm grasp on the Italian language, an Italian husband, and an assortment of hobbies that I probably never would have discovered if I hadn’t moved here.