Sitting on Pollepel Island in New York's Hudson River, a stunning piece of history is slowly crumbling away.
29.03.2024 - 20:33 / cntraveler.com
“I just can’t do a lot of stairs.”
My mother tells me this on our first afternoon in Puglia as we’re munching on eggplant-stuffed Panzerotti in Ostuni’s sprawling town square, the kick-off to what will be a two-week journey around Italy. Unfortunately for her, that fateful plea was the equivalent of trying to avoid sand in the Serengeti. We eventually walked up and down, and up and down, so many countless unavoidable steps over the next 14 days it was almost as if the vacation Gods heard my poor mother and giggled as they multiplied them. I’m now certain that “Positano” itself translates to “land of lots of blisters.”
Whenever I'd tell people I was going on a trip with my mother, I’d get the same wide-eyed reaction: “That’s so cute!” Is it, though? I guess guys around my age are supposed to embark on honeymoons in Italy. But we embody the clichéd closeness of an Italian mother and son, and I’m enough of an old soul that we meet in the middle. Plus, who better than my mother to visit the land of my ancestors with?
My late grandmother Olga immigrated from Naples to New York during World War II and barely looked back. And while I’ve visited our homeland a handful of times, my mother has only been once, two long decades ago. I was with her on that Globus bus tour around the country’s most iconic sights, just a kid with nary an understanding of my heritage. Today I have a deeper appreciation of what it means to be Italian American, and wanted to show my mom that overseas excursions don't have to be once-in-a-lifetime endeavors. We’re a duo because my father is in a better place: back home in the US. Traveling for him is as enjoyable as getting a double root canal, so he’s just as content participating through FaceTime.
Our next stop after Puglia was her request: a train and a car down to the Amalfi Coast to Praiano’s seaside Casa Angelina, where we’re met outside by the charming staff who lead us to the check-in desk. “You’re booked in our Romantic Suite,” the front desk worker coos in a charming accent before catching herself. “I mean, we’ll put you in a different room.” (I’m pretty sure we remained in the same room and they just stopped calling it romantic thereafter.)
That afternoon, we skip down to the pool, perched on a terrace overlooking a picture-perfect vista of the Amalfi. As lemon groves dangle above us, we sip Aperol Spritzes and Pellegrinos and take turns taking pictures of each other: me to make my friends jealous on Instagram, and her to make her friends jealous on Facebook. Or as we liked to say with a wink, to let everybody know we got to Italy safely.
But as the saying goes: “If you think you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents.” Each time we’d return to our suite at
Sitting on Pollepel Island in New York's Hudson River, a stunning piece of history is slowly crumbling away.
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