Italian Hours

Based on forty years of travelling, Italian Hours by Henry James was first published in 1909. It famously ends with the words “the luxury of loving Italy”, and it is difficult to think of another piece of travel writing more fitting to bring along to Pontus as Anna and I are about to jet off for a weekend on the shores of Lake Maggiore – while going all-in on Talamone.

Having synchronized our calendars for the coming months – which will include the supervision of dozens of theses and the grading of untold numbers of exams – a glass of that already legendary Nespolino Chardonnay from Emilia-Romagna helps round off the edges of what will be an absurdly busy spring, especially as I will be away for a week in California over Easter to attend WPSA.

At Pontus, I ordered the oven-baked salmon with dill potatoes, Sandefjord sauce, crudité salad and trout roe, while Anna went for the Vietnamese bánh mì with chicken, sriracha mayonnaise, pickled carrot, daikon radish, spring onion and crispy onion. In both cases, the chefs certainly delivered and we are soon ready to board our flight to Milan, where the Olympic fury should have passed by now. Still, Italy's complicated relationship with (over)tourism is, of course, nothing new, as James observed more than a century ago:

“Cunningly select your hour – half the enjoyment of Venice is a question of dodging – and enter at about one o’clock, when the tourists have flocked off to lunch and the echoes of the charming chambers have gone to sleep among the sunbeams”