Ophelia King & friends

In search of a little R&R, our Sauce Contributor Ophelia King ventured to Europe. We dip our toes into the Mediterranean waters as she shares her photo journal of Italia and a few tips on how to eat, pray, love, the right way.

I set out on this trip as an act of self-care. The last 12 months have been full of change and although it’s often hard to recognise while you’re in the thick of it, I managed to acknowledge that I’ve actually had a bit of time. I (magically) figured that carving out some space for a bit of reflection would probably do me (and everyone around me) some good.

It’s easy to talk yourself out of time off - too expensive, tricky logistics, no time etc, but sometimes you just have to say fuck it, YOLO and do it anyway because like most things it always works out and you will never regret going on holiday. So I gathered my gal pals Nina, Amanda and Abbey and we hit Italia for a little eat, pray love (double the eat and minus the pray in my case). Here’s our highs (because there were no lows), some pretty vague recommendations and snippets of playful wee images we dreamt up together.

Places

Get a car (a very small one). Italians are mental drivers, but if you are into zero road rules and no indicating (100% me) then it’s a pretty good time. Bring your confidence.

Go literally anywhere in Sicily. Syracuse is next-level beautiful, as is Noto - we went to THE place from chefs table and the granita was legit good. Cefalu was also a dreamy little place, we stayed out about 10 minutes drive from the centre in a beautiful Airbnb complete with private roof terrace.

It is worth doing the Amalfi coast, we drove but didn’t stay anywhere along it and I think that was the right way to do it, it really does look like a postcard.

If in Naples, go vintage shopping and find the night club called “alter ego”, we danced on a stage, it was trashy and sweaty and I loved every second.

Books & podcast recommendations

Men without Women - Murakami

Normal People - Sally Rooney

The fuck it diet (podcast)

Casefiles (podcast)

Note: If you happen to come across a book called “Only in Naples” consider not reading it. I am big into recommended holiday read section at the airport but this was def one of the worst books I’ve encountered although I did read the whole thing in about 3 hours and there are recipes at the back that look quite tasty.

Here is a delish drink dreamt up by Abbey which we shall call the looker licker featuring an Italian liquor.

Recipe

One part Amaro, two parts Prosecco, a splash of soda

Shitloads of ice (cannot stress how important this is) and the peel of grapefruit or lemon

I don’t really know how you mix it but if you follow those ratios, pour it over ice and use your intuition I’m sure it’ll work out just fine.

Top tips from my gals (summarised because we all basically think the same stuff)

Sometimes it’s good to travel with your besties and not your partners/lovers/dates, removing romantic pressure can be a good vibe.

Talk about your shit and listen to your mates talk about their shit, because this is how we work out our shit.

Laugh heaps, cry too and be silly.

Don’t move around too much, all of Italy is great so it doesn’t really matter where you go, it’ll all be nice - don’t bother trying to cover it all.

Don’t put pressure on yourself to see and do everything, if you want to sleep and read then just do that (e.g unless you are really really really into historical sites prob wouldn’t bother with Pompeii, reading the history and imaging what it was like in its hay day was more interesting than actually walking around it - for me).

Eat cheese but also just eat everything and definitely eat when you are hungry because otherwise you get grumpy and no one wants to be grumpy on holiday.