A Mother-Daughter Trip All Over Italy

In the fall of 2011 I was entering my junior year of college and in an uncharacteristic fit of spontaneity, I had applied to spend the entire year abroad in England. The term started later than most, and so to make the most of it (and probably to help ease my nerves about the decision), my mom and I took a trip together through the south of France and Italy. It was a beautiful, sun-soaked, fig-laden trip, and we’d vow to do it again, and soon.  

One of my favorite photos of my mom, taken during cocktail hour at a beachside cafe in Levanto, 2011

My mom and I are not best friends in the Gilmore Girls way, a sort of mind-melding closeness I yearned for as a kid. Instead, my dad was the one I turned to when I craved deeper conversation, when I needed a gentle nudge in one direction or another. But my mom and I bonded through rituals. Growing up, she’d encourage me to take mental health days and we’d spend them together; we turned ‘running errands’ into daylong excursions, took long walks in the woods near where I grew up, and every year we planned an “Oscars Day” (she’s a costume designer and that is her superbowl).  

But somehow 15 years would pass before we’d find ourselves traveling together again, just the two of us – this time to Puglia and Milan in late May, just as beach weather curled around the corner. 

We flew first to Rome, and then to Bari, where I begged for the smallest car available, having been warned about perilously narrow streets. Then we made our way to Masseria Parco della Grava in Fasano, the roads peppered with bright red poppies as the city gave way to olive groves and glimpses of the sea.

The Masseria (a fortified farmhouse dating back to 1726) became our home base for the next few days as we explored northern puglia. We started each day with brimming ‘espressinos’ (an Appulian speciality), and then set off on day trips, exploring Otsuni, Alberobello, and Cisternino.

I planned the trip the same way I would go about planning an author tour for my job – I even made a google doc itinerary and a shared map, I printed out our bookings for the car rental and our hotels. I was coming off the heels of moving jobs and moving apartments, in problem-solving mode and braced for logistical jumpscares. I took on the role of navigator, my mom happy to adopt her usual go-with-the-flow attitude and follow my direction. 

In 1972, when she was 19, my mom worked as a cocktail waitress to save up money to go to Europe on her own. She traveled via the Eurorail pass to about 12 countries in the span of 4 months, forging the itinerary as she went with only Rick Steve’s Europe on 5 Dollars a Day as her guide.

That was admittedly a very different time in a lot of ways ($5!), but my favorite moments of the trip were admittedly not the ones I scheduled, or the spots I mapped out via instagram deep-dives (although Borgo Antico in Otsuni is worth a stop for the view alone, and the prosciutto piled high on glistening melon). 

Aperitivo hour at Borgo Antico in Ostuni

The whitewashed village of Ostuni

My favorite moments were the ones we didn’t plan for, the plans we pivoted to as the day revealed itself. We had planned to spend a night in the ancient city of Matera, but a cycling tour closed down the city and we adjusted our reservations to spend two more nights in Fasano, taking advantage of more time in the sapphire sea at Polignano a Mare, where we stumbled on a less-frequented beach we returned to again and again.

A sudden downpour held us hostage for a four-hour lunch in Alborello, and we emerged to gleaming rainwashed streets and a completely empty city in what had been a tourist trap hours earlier. A recommendation from our hotel concierge led us to a windswept hike on a barely-there trail to Spiaggia di Torre Guaceto, where we ran into another mother and daughter soaking in the water. And my favorite of all: late-night, meandering conversations when we both found ourselves awake at 2 am from a fateful combination of jet lag, one-too-many espressinos, and mid-day gelato, giggling and talking late into the night, as perhaps we’ve never talked before. 

Spiaggia di Torre Guaceto

It was one of those very hiccups that led us to the last stop on our trip – we had planned to head down to southern Puglia, but the weather was cold and overcast. At my mom’s suggestion, we changed our reservations around last-minute and flew to Milan a day early, allowing us borrowed time to explore the city and an extra day to travel to Lake Como—where hordes of selfie takers couldn’t detract from the incredible beauty of the mountains around us and the clear, bracingly cold water. We got provisions at a sandwich spot in Bellagio and found a spot away from the crowds to picnic and swim, one last dip before returning home.

Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan

It’s in recent years that my mom and I have started to talk more deeply: about our careers, about the prospect of motherhood, about marriage and friendships, essentially about how to be a woman in the world. My mom lost her own mother in her early 20s, a kind of absence I can’t imagine as I ask her questions about what route to take, where to go next. And she reminds me, time and time again, that sometimes the best route is the one you didn’t expect, the one you can’t plan for, the one not saved on your map.