Travel is Romantic
Travel is romantic. It’s leaving what you think you know, and going somewhere that you really don’t know at all. Even if you pretend you do. My job as a travel writer is to make things seem even more romantic, to basically sell you on a place (vomit) or to tell you such a compelling story that you’re just dying to rush there. It’s incredibly conceited. If you think that ad nauseum coastal part of literally anywhere happened without some travel writer, or that main drag hideousness section of a city, or the ever overblown -Enter Destination here -, or even the two sides of Ibiza became such hits without serious marketing dollars - well, you’re mistaken. Conundrum. Alas, but so we continue.
There are many more, equally or superior, places on the planet. The reason that you haven’t read about them in a list, or a listicle (vomit, again) is that some travel writers try to hide them. I have been to a number of places on the planet - won’t utter a word where - and left without telling anyone about them. This one island is part of Greece’s collection - I would never tell anyone about it, it would just ruin it when the cruise ships and the idiots arrive. I have friends who drive down to Mexico’s Baja every year, and they refuse to tell me what they’ve found - and rightfully so, they shouldn’t utter a word. They park their rig, as they call it (but really it’s a giant mercedes van kitted out with fineries) at some beautiful sunset spot and stay for as long as they want.
So here comes the dichotomy of my job - I am paid to go see places around the globe in order to ruin them...writing for a major publication is to advertise a place, to steer people towards it. If this major publication is “credible” enough it means a few million eyeballs will land on the page (and sometimes they tell me they get “impressions” which in truth mean virtually nothing but makes the press agency look like they’ve done their job) and inspire future trips. Sometimes it gets such interest that hotels I’ve mentioned are booked out for years and as the dollar signs float.
Someone called me an old school writer this week - interested in storytelling, not SEO or trying to get “engagement” (which doesn’t necessarily do anything really) online. Maybe I liked it.
The charm and romance of the place I wrote about is partially contingent on the fact that it’s barring hordes of people, right? Take the place where I proposed to my husband - coastal Sicily. Nice try, no I am not telling you where it is. But what made that moment incredible, besides for his big brown eyes and trusting smile, is that it is ours - there was not a single human for miles. Just the warm sea, cliffs, mountains in the distance, forests, and my proposal.
He’s not sentimental. But he’s romantic in his own way - like out of the blue he’ll laugh at something I said, and drag his hand through my hair. We’ve been together for almost a decade, and it still surprises me. It still makes my silly little heart jump. So proposing to him wasn’t going to be schmaltz-y.
He is classic New Jersey Italian, think Sopranos with fewer bodies, and so Sicily where his father’s family came from made logistical sense to me. He loves the Mediterranean Sea, as much sun as possible, and nothing he hates more than an audience. So high summer, I take him on a European whirlwind tour and we eventually get settled in Sicily.
We parked our rental car on the side of a nowhere road, and walked this slightly trodden path through farm gates and humming pine trees. The air begging for a swim. A small dune appears and then breathless - miles and miles of white sandy beach, the sea just quietly doing what it has done for centuries. I threw off my bathing costume, and ran into the water - winking at him to join me. And there we stood, wee waves kissing my face...of course, I was going to choose this moment to propose: naked, swimming in the sea, in the land of his ancestors. He knew it was coming as I asked him to be mine for all of time. Of course, he said.
And so history was written. Two lives coming into a merger. Two lunatics fused. And so Sicily became our special place. We reference it in stories, we laugh about that moment often. We talk about the landscape and how it created this dream-like moment that was private, and ours. Sometimes I’ll ask him to remember the smells of that moment, the salt, the green forest, the sun...his sunscreen, his mouth, the morning’s cologne that still lingers. Sicily held us for a moment, held us so we could create our romance. And we don’t have to tell anyone our location…