I feel in love with Italy when I first visited with my family several years ago and it was the place that I found protection from a tangled web that I found myself in during business one and business two. My love for Italy has been an ongoing romance ever since I first stepped foot across their borders and in some way or another, it feels like a second home. When given the opportunity, I travel back as frequent as possible and in this particular case, my travels consisted of a trip lasting no more than 24-hours, once landing.
Lario, or simply Lake Como, is considered a vacation destination, but it doesn't feel like one; rather, it feels like something out of a Grace Kelly film. Everything is beautiful down to the last detail and that is something I have always loved and appreciated. The locals live authentically: they bike into town or to the farms to buy produce and fresh meats for dinner, drink wine from the grapes that they harvested in nearby vineyards and most of them don't know what Twitter is. It's entirely and completely fantastic and since I respect their way of life, I tried not to be that obnoxious American girl taking photos every chance I get. As much as I love technology, it's a totally luxurious and natural way of living that would be a shame if we didn't have in this world.
My short jaunt in their country consisted of jetsetting off before sunrise, only to land with enough time to get dressed for a black tie dinner party at a nearby Villa on The Lake; the main attraction for my spontaneous, last-minute weekend jaunt. There is something wonderful about attending these grown-up events where you get to pretend that you are Cinderella and dance around twirling in Roberto Cavalli and Manolo Blahnik, adorned with tons of jewels; mine in particular happened to be Repossi. When I started to shiver from a chilly breeze, my date kindly and immediately placed his dinner jacket on my shoulders, a dinner jacket that was custom Armani with his family name engraved on the inner lining. My date has extremely proper manners, which is something I highly respect and an attribute that really makes a man, a man. He opens doors, holds my coat or offers his, pulls out my chair, stands up when I leave the table, makes sure that I walk on the inside of the sidewalk and makes everything seem so breezy. He's charming and his charm and persistence recently won me over, so much so that I agreed to come to Italy for 24-hours. Between the overly political conversations surrounding long and short hedges and the way the lake shimmered with a perfect view of the moon- it was if our adventure was lifted straight out of our very own screenplay with conversations that I actually really enjoyed having, with people I actually really enjoyed being around. My date continued to impress his small audience and I continued speaking to the gentleman next to me about the current stagnancy in fossil fuels and how the divestment movement is shaping up to be quite powerful with folks like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund divesting over $50B from fossil fuel investments. But as the older gentleman was speaking, I didn’t hear any of that malarkey that was traveling out of his mouth. Instead, I caught the dreamy bright blue eyes of my date, only to hear him say this quote by Cormac McCarthy, "Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing". It seemed highly relevant and worth noting, since I couldn't agree with him more, as he has fostered his own mini-kingdom having grazed through the 2008 recession hangover with such grace. Also speaking of The Rockefeller family, The Rockefeller Foundation coincidentally owns the hotel that I stayed at- Villa Serbelloni, one of my favorites on the lake with the most divine bedding ever.
The next morning, having slept maybe two hours and completely and entirely high off of the banter from the prior night, I woke and snapped these photos with my point and shoot camera, while boating around the very place that makes me feel reborn. In fact, these photos look eerily reminiscent of my former adventures in Como and it makes me think that Lario hasn't changed one bit and that I never even left to begin with. It was quite chilly on our boat ride, so I was wearing a long sleeve white silk button down from Max Mara with beige leggings from Theory, brown quilted boots from Chanel and an embellished Brunello Cucinelli oversized boyfriend knit with a matching hat that I purchased at my local H&M that looks identical to my Brunello sweater, with the only obvious differentiating factor being that it's not cashmere. Unfortunately and tragically, I did not document my outfit, as I don't believe my date knows that I have a blog and I felt rudely interrupting our discussion on ISIS to take a photo of me just didn't sound entirely correct. As I write this, I sit on a jet back to the US drinking a Bloody Mary to wake me up and get some work cranked out. Many of you know that I am a workaholic and as someone that totally adores her job, I made sure I was back before sunrise Monday AM Eastern time to get back to the grind like a good girl.
This was perhaps the best weekend I have had this year. Til my next adventure- Viva l'Italia, darling!
Photography: Self. Location: Lake Como. City Guide: Lake Como.