Travel journal: Notes from Salerno
Highlights: ancestral pilgrimages, Italian karaoke, foraging for food, meeting buffalo, and dogs in church. Plus - how do you want to be remembered?
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Whenever I see a picture of myself that I love, one thought comes to mind before any others. It’s not that I should save it, or share it, or print it out. In fact, it’s fairly morbid—something I’ve never shared before. I have a brief flash that says: if I die tomorrow, I hope this is the picture that people remember me by.
I’ve always been a little bit fixated on the idea of legacy. No doubt this is a foundational reason that I am a writer and a photographer. Life is full of changes, and if you’re a romantic, that means tiny crumbs of bittersweet grief are everywhere. In that sense, I’ve come to realize that I’m thinking not literally of death, but rather of change. It’s like when the “Death” card comes up in tarot. It means something will end. It’s supposed to, to create space for the new.
This impulse is never stronger than when I see an image of myself with my son. Seeing myself beside someone who is changing so rapidly is a very particular benchmark. It marks an exact moment in time, in between the day he learned to pronounce “excuse me” and the day he realised three comes after two. See, he had almost outgrown those pants, but the shoes still fit, so it had to be exactly April 19.
This is the photo I’m thinking of when I say this, taken on our spring break adventure to Southern Italy. We went from coast to coast, but spent most of our time in Salerno, staying with a friend’s incredibly generous parents. In this photo, they had taken us to Agropoli, essentially a vertical neighborhood of winding streets on top of a hill. It’s crowned with a castle.
I like everything about this moment, including our shadows.
The night before the trip, I stayed up way too late, as I often do. And since I had promised we could leave around 9 a.m., I knew I had to pack before bed, without waking the boys. I packed in the dark, with just my phone flashlight, at one in the morning. And if this isn’t a use case for the S&E Packing List, I don’t know what is. Because I packed in 30 minutes, I had everything I needed, and there was room left over for the dress in the photo above.
Some days practicality can feel a little depressing to me, especially when I haven’t been sleeping well or going out of my way to care for my hair and skin. Travel is rough! I was glad I had it.
Despite using the Style and Error Official Packing Bible, as I now think of it, as a base, I did not choose to pack light. I also brought three books, my sketching and watercolor supplies, my yoga mat, and my dedicated hiking shoes that I thrifted for ten euro. As I hoisted everything into our comically small “midsize” rental car (Europe, am I right), Tom noted that Barbie had all her accessories for this trip. Guilty as charged. The only thing I actually used was my camera.
Sometimes I lie to myself about how much attention two-and-a-half year old children demand. Oh well.
For the Gatto boys, this wasn’t just a vacation; it was a pilgrimage. Since we’re working toward getting Italian citizenship through Tom’s great-grandmother, we have amassed a collection of documents about his family heritage. Thanks to those, we were able to find the streets where one great-grandmother lived, in Pietrelcina, and great-great grandfather, from Stessa Cilento.
My own family history is in Poland and the U.K., but it was still meaningful for me. I love that Michael has such a rich background to draw on. Thanks to my grandma, an avid researcher of family history, he has a deep well of knowledge on both our sides. I’m sure someday we’ll show him mine, too.
The Amalfi Coast
One travel tip our hosts offered us was that, as soon as it gets warm, it’s best to steer clear of the Amalfi Coast on Saturdays and Sundays. When they took us for a drive on Friday, we understood: the coast is only accessible by narrow, winding roads that were already clotted with buses and double-parked cars. There’s no inland option. It’s a slow drive with a beautiful view, but if you go, take our hosts’ advice: go by train, and explore on foot.
Easter Weekend in Italy
During our stay in Bologna, we promised ourselves that the majority of our travel would be in Italy, and we would spend most of our weekends getting to know our host city. We’ve done exactly that, and I’ve found that the regions of Italy are every bit as distinct as the regions of the United States.
I think the reason why I imagined Italy to be a little more homogenous is because of its relatively smaller size, but it has every bit as many dialects, traditions, and cultural quirks as you would find if you traveled from New York to Texas to Minnesota to California. Everyone speaks a little differently, has different traditions and starring dishes in their cuisines, and has an immense amount of pride in the places they’re from.
Italy loves Catholic holidays, unsurprisingly, but one thing I didn’t know until this trip is that the Monday after Easter is known as Pasquetta. The tradition here is to get together with friends for a party or a barbecue. We were so lucky to be able to join our hosts when they went with their friends.
People kept telling Tom he’s too skinny and insisting that he “Eat, eat!” Then, in between courses, there was Italian karaoke accompanied by YouTube soundtracks. The star of the afternoon used a huge pepper grinder as a microphone. If you’re a fan of the late, great Anthony Bourdain’s show Parts Unknown, it had the vibe of one of his intimate meals with friends.
What’s more, we also noticed that Southern Italy was most familiar to Tom and I in terms of the Italian American families we know at home in New York. Historically, that’s because around the time of World War II, the Italian immigrants to the Northeastern United States are almost entirely from the South. Italian immigration from the North, including Bologna and Milan, flowed almost exclusively to central and south America—particularly Argentina, which a friend recently referred to as “the Italy of the Americas.”
All that to say, the tables pushed together to accommodate a huge and boisterous family and more food than one group of people could ever consume reminded me a lot of some of my closest friends’ holiday traditions.
Finally, RE: Amazing holiday traditions, this is a recipe for the most unbelievable Easter pastry, Pastiera Napoletana. Here in Bologna, grocery stores sell the grains needed for the filling pre-cooked to shorten the prep time—they’re called grano cotto. In the U.S., if you have an Italian specialty store nearby, you might be able to find some. Either way, if you’re a baker and have even the slightest interest in this project, please, take my advice and give it a try. It is HEAVENLY.
Speaking of food pride…
In Battipaglia, in the province of Salerno, they have mozzarella. And that mozzarella is made from buffalo milk. In fact, technically speaking, only mozzarella made from buffalo’s milk is actually mozzarella. If a cow made the milk, it’s fior di latte. Anyway, naturally, we did a bit of agrotourism and met some buffalo. Michael felt so-so about the whole thing, but I was delighted. They let me pet their scratchy little noses while they sunbathed!
One last dip
We made a one-night stop to break up our drive back to Bologna, and I ran into the sea in my underwear. Meanwhile, Italians passed by with their fists stuffed into their parkas. Hey, cold plunges are all the rage.
If you made it this far, you’re a real one. I’ll leave you with some sunset images from the Mediterranean side of the boot on Easter.
One thing I love about being here in Europe is the ease of access to travel. When we are based in the U.S., a week of traveling around Southern Italy takes months of planning. Here, from our apartment in Bologna, we just sent a few text messages and rented a car.
I only mention this because the strangest phenomenon happened where I didn’t quite realize how momentous this trip was going to be. It felt like we were headed on a quick weekend jaunt, and all of a sudden we were deep in a totally unfamiliar experience, enjoying a truly immersive and perspective-altering experience.