Last Sunday, I did something very out of character.
I woke up early, rode an electric scooter on the side of the road in traffic to the marina, and hopped aboard a Sicilian beach day boat tour.
If you know me in real life, you know that I’ve practically made it my full-time job to avoid ever being seen wearing a bathing suit, and being in direct sunlight for more than an hour is something that I agree to maybe twice per year.
If the government ever needs to extract secrets from me, I urge them to put me in a bikini and send me to a beautiful tropical island for six hours before they resort to waterboarding. I’ll tell them anything they want to know.
We floated along the coast of Sicily, stopping at scenic swimming spots along Mondello Beach and surrounding islands. Our boat tour guides barely spoke English, but they’d pull up between boats of Italian families, yell to “get in, get in!” and throw pool noodles at us. The saltwater dried my hair in five or six different weird windswept styles throughout the day.
And though I diligently greased myself up with sunscreen every hour and a half like I was going to slither through the air vents on a bank heist, and spent a considerable portion of the day wrapped in a stolen bath towel and wearing a long-sleeved black blouse that was more “business casual” than “beach day” - I still managed to sustain a very painful sunburn.
My beautiful summer sun goddess of a friend, Claire, started out tan and ended even tanner. Her summer vibe is “golden mermaid lounging in a beam of light.”
Meanwhile, my summer vibe is decidedly “sickly Victorian woman who has been sent to convalesce in the fresh sea air.”
Or Wednesday Addams, tolerating summer camp.
And despite the sunburn and the hostile summer conditions, I really did have a great time.
Some of you are baffled by this. Somehow, regularly flirting with melanoma and sizzling like a breakfast sausage in a frying pan doesn’t bother you. In fact, you seem to enjoy it?
But my pasty German ancestors passed down the genetics to survive a harsh winter, not hot pavement. If I expose my upper arms at night, I glow in the dark. “Hot and bothered” is a real thing, and I am very bothered.
And while sweating profusely in front of the Duomo is certainly more aesthetically pleasing than sweating profusely in a Target parking lot 7 minutes from your home - I also cannot stand idly by and let the propaganda of the Instagram travel influencers draw the linen over your eyes by convincing you that August in Italy is just a breezy, romantic, photogenic series of aperol spritzes.
It may look like la dolce vita in Florence 24/7, but here’s what they’re not telling you:
Don’t sit down at a restaurant to sip some of Tuscany’s finest wine if you don’t know the Italian phrase for “May I have more napkins? I need to soak up the sweat pouring off the back of my knees before I ruin your chairs.”
Searing hot pasta just doesn’t hit the same on a 94-degree day. At least you’ll have the opportunity to pay 4 euros for a bottle of room-temperature water to keep the sunstroke from setting in.
Dressing for this volume of back sweat isn’t easy. For several days in a row, I’ve washed and re-worn the same button-down dad shirt tucked into the single pair of shorts I brought with me. I look like I’m about to receive a shipment of illegal exotic reptiles at the Miami airport.
It’s only by the modern miracle of Facetune that your favorite travel bloggers are molding themselves into something Instagram-worthy. Every single person standing on the Ponte Vecchio looks like this:
5 Things I Consumed This Week:
Anchovies, for the first time.
I ordered a sandwich and didn’t realize fish was involved because “pistachio crema” was enticing enough for me to stop trying to translate the list of ingredients. I lived on God’s green earth for 29 years before learning that you just… eat the bones?A $7 bowl of cacio e pepe that changed my life!!!
And then a few days later, a homemade attempt at cacio e pepe that was nearly as good as the original.The first two seasons of Girls on HBO. (Finally, Nickelle!)
A near constant refresh of “Jeff Goldblum” on Twitter for the past 72 hours - looking for leads that might help me hone in on his whereabouts in Florence. (I remain unsuccessful in hunting him down, but… life finds a way…)
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on repeat, while writing this.
Summer is my least favorite. Of course.
Excellent, my Darling, as always. I don't know if it supplants my favorite Hungarian Grocery store episode, but it is certainly close and very much "you" as I have spent many years hearing your opinion of summer. Yes, I caught the reference to Jurassic Park in your Jeff Goldblum comment. Stay cool!