Buon Ferragosto
Sto bene al mare
For all the time we have lived in Italy we have almost never traveled in August. I always preferred to stay home and have the city to myself. Those early Roman summers were empty and quiet and still. Shops took turns being open so that there was at least one place not too far away to buy milk and bread and pasta. We could drive from where we lived in Balduina, just north of the Vatican, skirting the Aurelian walls and traversing monumental bridges Nanni Moretti style down to EUR or Casal Palocco on the southern edge of town or up the always blocked with traffic via Cassia to Vigna Clara where pals had swimming pools in fancy condominium complexes in a swift 30 minutes. You could park anywhere. Even along the Lungotevere! We went to the beach to watch the sunset on weekday evenings when Mark finished work. I think that those empty silent days are over. There is still an air of slowing down and quietness but the general overall vibe is not the same. People don’t go away for the entire month anymore. Most places close for a few weeks at most and it feels like so many more people travel to Italy now making places like the Pantheon and Colosseum and Fontana di Trevi perpetually busy.
I have only been in Venice for two Augusts so I don’t know how it felt decades ago but it doesn’t feel empty and quiet now. My neighbors are home. The street is still filled with laundry. (That deserted everything is closed and people are away thing happens in Venice after Christmas and lasts until Carnevale.) Piazza San Marco and Rialto are perpetually busy.1 Mark doesn’t have long days at the office anymore but we do go the beach on weekday evenings to watch the sunset. We still don’t travel in July or August.
I have been thinking a lot about the idea of vacation. Not travel exactly but taking a break. Like really taking a break. Extricating yourself from routine and obligation. Tuning out the noise and documenting and endless scroll to just be here. What the Romans exalted as Otium. Giorgia Meschini explains it well here.
To me that is the true spirit of Italian summer in general and Ferragosto in particular. My annual Ferragosto wish for you is to find a moment of Italian idyl today. We are off to the beach!
x, g
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