The first time I drove a car in a foreign country, I was 22 and on assignment in Sardinia. It was the kind of tiny rental that vibrates at 40 miles per hour on the open road, whining well before it's time to shift gears. I'd been traveling on my own throughout Italy for a couple of months and by now felt comfortable enough with the language and culture, and also my solitude, to venture farther afield.
Apart from the language, Sardinia felt only vaguely familiar. Gazes here were more direct, though not entirely warm, and the people seemed more serious and withholding than their Neapolitan neighbors. As in much of southern Italy, the cultural sediment of the Phoenician, Punic, Roman, Arab, and Spanish presence over millennia is as visible here in the Roman amphitheaters and Gothic Catalan churches as on the faces of the people. The smaller the island, I've found, the more its isolation can breed a certain reserve—though the flip side of centuries of foreign conquest is often a refreshing straightforwardness.
At one point, I wandered off the main route into a one-church town at twilight, a time of day when older men in this part of the world are out walking with hands clasped behind their backs or playing chess while the women are indoors, likely preparing dinner. When I made my way across the piazza, it was as though someone had cut the music and all eyes were on me. While not exactly afraid for my safety, I blushed, acutely aware of my own foreignness. I stepped into a cafe and ordered a coffee, resisting a strong urge to peel out in my Fiat Panda. It was then that the only other woman there, an elderly cashier who saw me trying to get something out of my eye, sidled off her stool to help. She waddled over, held my eye open while I blinked away the lash, and parted only with an "Eccola," pronouncing her work done.
Today I think a lot about those travel experiences that simultaneously repel and compel us to dig deeper, to work through initial discomfort or loneliness. Put another way, I've come to realize it's only when we feel a little lost ourselves that we're truly ripe for a certain kind of vulnerable interaction.
This, our Secret Italy edition, is a collection of off-the-A1 detours, happy accidents, deeply personal accounts, and hidden gems you won't find anywhere else, culled from the editors, contributors, expats, designers, and friends we trust the most. Our hope is to arm you with just enough found-only-here juicy tidbits to allow you to get lost and find your own.
