Bric-a-Brac 54
Mediterranean Summer Part 3: A Puglia trip to celebrate getting Italian passports, last-minute home rentals from Spain to Sicily, water sandals that are actually chic, and BTS at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc
We’re back for the last installment of our Med-themed Bric-a-Bracs (though you’ll of course see plenty more Med here in the coming weeks, with a final Italy Dispatch next Saturday before we switch to our Postcards series). If you’ve been traveling, we hope it's been everything you hoped for, and if you’re not on the road, we have a couple of transporting ideas that can at least take you somewhere in spirit. If you’re still hoping to get away and looking for something last minute, we found a bunch of rental houses through friends that still have some availability across the Med. And finally, to help you plan your trip when you’re on the road, check out our new friend, AmiGo. It’s the app we’ve been dying for someone to make since forever, giving mapped recs from interesting travelers, some of whom are Yolo contributors, like Lucy Laucht and Diana Bartlett, and now us. You can search by location, or via what’s recommended near you. Our first locations are Patmos, Bordeaux, Rome and the Napa Valley. You can download it here (iOS only for now), and use the code YoloGo to cut the line and access the app, which is free.
JUST BACK FROM…Puglia
By Carly Shea
For the last five or so years, my mom has been researching our Italian lineage as part of the process to prove jure sanguinis—the right to citizenship by direct bloodline. Having Italian citizenship means we can live and work anywhere in the EU, travel freely with no limit on stays in the EU and make the most of many other benefits. She’s combed through hundreds of posts in the “Dual U.S.-Italian Citizenship” Facebook pages and has woken up at ridiculous hours to try and book an impossible-to-get appointment at the consulate. We finally hired a lawyer from Italian Citizenship Assistance after learning that we qualified as a special “1948 Case.” (Prior to 1948, when the Italian Constitution granted women civil rights, women could not transfer citizenship to their children jure sanguinis. A 1948 Case allows you to claim Italian citizenship through a female ancestor.) After years of waiting, our court case was finally approved earlier this year, and to celebrate we decided to plan a trip to Puglia, where one side of our Italian family had immigrated from. Though we didn't have plans to drive around looking for distant cousins à la White Lotus, it still felt like a special sort of homecoming to see their last name, Fanelli, on plenty of tiny trattorias, and to recognize the family recipes we grew up eating on most menus.
My mom, aunt, sister and I all took the red eye from JFK to FCO and had just enough time for an espresso in the airport before catching our next flight to Bari, the capital of Puglia and the starting point of our road trip. Our first stop for a few nights was Alberobello—one of the famous whitewashed towns in the Valle d’Itria made up almost entirely of trulli (hive-shaped stone houses), which felt straight out of a fairytale. We had rented a villa just outside of the town center for five nights so we could take day trips from there. There’s no shortage of beautiful rental properties and Masserias where you can stay in this area (more on those in our Southern Italy Travel Planner)—just make sure there is a real person on the ground who can help if you have plumbing or electrical issues like we did! We rented through Plum Guides and our trulli home was beautiful, but because of its age had quite a few issues, and we ended up losing power and running water for two days. Of course, this was just our experience at one property, but neither our host nor their corporate office were very helpful. Next time, we will book with the Thinking Traveller, which specializes in this region. Our friend and Yolo partnerships director, Rula Al Amad, just finished meticulously renovating her stunning Masseria Donnagnora and told us how thoroughly the Thinking Traveller team vetted her property before adding it to their platform.
For our first night, we booked dinner at farm-to-table restaurant Terra Madre, and sat just a few feet from the garden where they harvested the produce for our meal. The service and food were excellent, so we stocked up on wine and snacks from their small store and were shocked when the bill for dinner (for 4 people!) plus everything else came to only 130 euro. Throughout our trip, we found that even though Puglia has grown in popularity in recent years, it is still quite affordable.
The rest of our days in this area were loosely planned—we would wake up and pick fresh cherries from the trees in our yard for breakfast as we decided on the day's activities. One day we spent a few hours meandering through the incredibly photogenic beach town of Polignano a Mare, before heading to Cala Maka beach club for lunch and an invigorating cold plunge in the ocean to stave off jet lag. Another day, in between visits to Locorotondo and Martina Franca, we booked a vineyard tour and wine tasting at I Pastini, which produces the typical primitivo wine of the region. A drive in any direction took us past endless fields of olive trees, so when we stumbled upon the Masseria Brancati on our way to Ostuni and saw they offered tours of their olive grove, we were eager to join one. Their property has beautifully gnarled trees with thick trunks that look like abstract sculptures, some of which are 3,000 years old! One of the oldest Masserias in the area, they have been producing oil on this site since the Middle Ages.
Speaking of which, our next stop was Matera, the oldest city in Italy, which has been continually inhabited since paleolithic times. But first, we stopped in Cassano delle Murge to look for the birth certificate of a relative who was a missing link in my mom’s research. We had been able to prove jure sanguinis through another relative and didn’t need this record for our case, but we were in the area and it was so satisfying after years of searching for specific records online and in the US to just walk right into the City Hall of the commune where our family lived some 150 years ago and to have a handsome Italian official find what we were looking for in a massive leather-bound book!
We spent two nights in Matera, which is a city made up entirely of sassi, or cave dwellings carved right out of the earth. Matera has a fascinating history, which we learned so much about during an excellent tour with a charming man named Gaetano from the next town over. Gaetano seemed to know everyone, and over the course of three hours stopped to engage with several Materans going about their day, as if the whole tour was a wildly orchestrated play and they were the actors. Despite its somewhat tragic history, at night the city was buzzing with well-heeled Italians enjoying a passeggiata, popping into small galleries and listening to live music in the cobblestone streets. If you visit Matera, you can’t miss I Vizi Degli Angeli, where I had potentially the best gelato of my life (I am a pistachio loyalist) and the chance to sleep in a sassi. We stayed in a beautiful cave room at Sassisuites, which was lovely, but after two nights the damp cave air was starting to get to us. That said, it is definitely worth it to spend a night to feel the energy of the city and take the most amazing candlelit bath in a stone cave with real fossils embedded in the rock.
From Matera, we dropped my sister and aunt off in Bari and my mom and I headed south towards Salento. While the photogenic masserias and olive oil fields of northern Puglia have probably graced your Instagram feed at some point in the last few years, the region’s southern counterpart, Salento, has still remained largely under the radar. In Salento, the beaches are full of fabulously unselfconscious nonnas bronzing in bikinis, and each town square seemed to have a small group of old men flip-flopping between passionate arguments and eruptions of laughter within the same puff of a cigarette.
On our way south, we spent one night at the quaint Hotel Piccolo Mondo, which felt straight out of our Costa Meno fantasy. A few kilometers down the road in the quiet hamlet of Marittima, we stopped at the impeccably curated Tulsi shop, where British expat Deborah Nolan greeted us in an ethereal kaftan and a bold red lip. Deborah opened Tulsi 15 years ago and has since expanded to a few locations throughout Puglia. Despite the town's sleepiness, the store was full of chic women from New York, London and California ogling basket-bags and textiles collected from Deborah's travels. We picked out a few souvenirs and zipped down the road towards our final stop, Palazzo Daniele, which I have been eager to check out since it opened in April 2019.
If you weren’t looking for it, you could drive right past Palazzo Daniele, located in the center of Gagliano del Capo, the very southernmost tip of Italy’s heel. The palazzo’s exterior blends right into the architecture of its surroundings, with an entrance marked only by a massive blue door. Once inside, Fabio led us to our suite, one of nine total, just off the open air courtyard that smelled of fresh jasmine. He pointed out some of the features of the Palazzo originally built in 1861 and insisted we make ourselves at home. A palazzo full of original frescoes, intricate mosaic flooring and contemporary art might sound like it could lean stuffy, but nothing here felt uptight or off-limits. We were encouraged to hang out in the kitchen, lounge beneath their orange trees, or help ourselves to a drink from the honor bar featuring a neon sign that cheekily read “holy spirits.”
And the food, my god the food! I have never seen my mom admit anyone’s meatballs were better than my grandmother’s—holidays at our house often consist of my mom and her siblings lovingly bickering about how to really make their family recipes the right way—so when she whipped out Google Translate at the dinner table to tell Sonia, the sweetest chef at Palazzo Daniele, that these were the best she’s ever had, I was floored. Sonia insisted on giving my mom an impromptu meatball lesson on the spot and their recipes were almost identical (though Sonia’s secret is to soak the breadcrumbs in milk first). Sonia insisted that this wasn't her job, it was her passion. Each person we encountered was just as warm, interesting, and full of stories to share. On our last night as we hugged Sonia goodbye, we saw other guests checking out exchanging hugs and Instagram accounts with the team that took such great care of them, too.
Carly Shea is Yolo Journal’s Editorial Assistant & Social Media Manager
TRAVEL UNIFORM
I know many of us identify as either sandy or rocky beach people, but I think we can all agree that if the water is beautiful, you just want to get into it at all costs. And while I’m usually more in the sandy camp, in high summer the rocky beaches tend to draw fewer people. One of my favorite beaches on Patmos, Petra (which means rock), has the most feet-challenging entry. Matt and I have always resisted buying water shoes, because they’re so unattractive and we never want to pack them. Then on the second to last day of the trip, we inevitably end up buying a pair because we just can’t take another miserable sea entry/exit. So when I found these jellies (made with hemp!) at Landline General Store in Paris, I bought them immediately and put them to work on a trip to Sicily. They’re the perfect beach vacation sandal because they work as a shoe, but also in the water—and they're cute. And besides, jelly sandals were supposedly first created in France in the 1950s and used by fishermen, so they work for men, too.
SHARE CONTACT
We’ve gotten a couple of requests from subscribers looking for last-minute summer house rentals in the Med (interestingly, these have been less about a particular country and more focused on size of house or setting somewhere near the sea). Here are a few that have come across our radar, which (at least as of pub time!) have availability from now through September:
Our friend Sciascia Gambaccini has the most incredible compound in Pantelleria—we had lunch there when we visited the island last month. It’s beautifully appointed and sleeps 10-14 depending on how many dammusos you rent (there’s a main house and 3 guest houses that sleep 10, but you can rent 2 more if you’re a bigger group). It has the pool of my dreams and her cook Gina makes local recipes with local ingredients—nonna cooking at its finest.
As previously mentioned, our director of partnerships, Rula Al Amad, just completed renovations on her olive-grove surrounded Masseria Donnagnora in Ostuni, which has 5BR, a gorgeous pool and availability in July and August via The Thinking Traveller.
Wellness expert and 3 Sources founder Rachel Baker’s lovely 3-br Provençal home in the Luberon, the 13th-century Maison Aumône, is open for summer stays from July 14 - October 13. You can see more of this amazing property on her IG, @3_sources.
And then our friends at Boutique Homes, who represent a well-curated selection of homes owned by creatives, let us know that the following houses still had some availability in July/Aug/Sept (as of a week ago, at least!):
Lenza Barn, Pianottoli-Caldarello, Corsica, France
Pietra Nova, Lumio, Corsica, France
Mas d'Images, Arles, Provence, France
Villa Rieucoulon, Montpellier, France
Casale Madre, Ostuni, Puglia, Italy
Casa Soleto, Soleto, Puglia, Italy
Aire.house, Denia, Costa Blanca, Spain
Casa da Oliveira - Monte Branco, Aljezur, Faro, Algarve, Portugal
Hidden Hill Naxos, Naxos, Cyclades, Greece
Onos Residence, Kamini, Hydra, Greece
Antiparos Hideaways, Antiparos, Cyclades, Greece
Stone Beach House, Chania, Crete, Greece
Santa Irini Retreat in Therasia, Cyclades, Greece
TRANSPORTING
As much as we talk about where to go in this newsletter, I also love to share our finds that transport us without actual travel. As we learned during the pandemic, the imagination is a powerful tool, and we can all stand to harness it more. One of my favorite books that I have learned so much from—about wine and Italy—is Joe Campanale’s Vino, which takes a deep dive into Italian wines. While I’m certainly not a wine geek, I do love learning about places and people through the lens of wine: Italy has the most indigenous grape varietals in the world, and each story of a different winemaker opens up a new world to me and gets me excited about going somewhere very much off the path. Plus, I’ll sound much smarter the next time I’m ordering wine in a restaurant. On another note, my husband Matt was inspired when we were in the Aeolian islands and made a martini that swapped an olive for a caper leaf. (You can watch the how-to here, and get the full recipe in his next newsletter.
And here are a few transporting playlists for you: Summer-Make it last forever; Issimo Italian Summer 60s-80s; Cycladelica and Yolo in Italy!
NAVIGATOR Q&A
Sophie Volant, Manager, Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, Antibes
How long have you worked at the hotel?
15 years. Which is not much compared to most of our hoteliers who have been at Hotel du Cap for 30 years, 40 years, some even for 48 or 49 years!
How did you get started down this path?
At age 19, I knew I wanted to be a hotelier. I wanted to travel the world. So I did. Once I completed my hotel management school, I worked in Asia, in America, in London, and in France.
What is the best part of your job? (And if you can admit it, the worst?)
The best part is having access to the extra-ordinary. The extra-ordinary setting we work in, the extra-ordinary guests we welcome, the extra-ordinary craftsmen and women we work with, and of course the extra-ordinary events we organize. But extra-ordinary does not mean ostentatious. It can lay in the most simple things as long as they are done with passion and authenticity.
What’s the coolest thing people don’t know about the hotel?
A lot of people who have never been to Hotel du Cap may think it is stuffy and strict. It is the opposite. The beauty of the grounds and facilities remains very simple and natural. The way our loyal hoteliers interact with our guests is very authentic, we don’t teach staff to talk with procedures, we just ask our hoteliers to be themselves, their elegant and natural selves. They form a rare combination of natural elegance and family spirit with our clients; it is quite humbling and beautiful.
What are your favorite restaurants in your area?
Chez Cesar at Plage Keller, a beautiful setting on a nearby beach with stunning views over the bay of Antibes and its old town. I also love Le Bistrot du Port, a hidden gem that offers the most creative seafood menu I have ever tasted. Chef Mathieu is simply an artist, I am in awe of what he creates.
What do you like to do on a day off? Night off?
The best local hike is the trail around the Cap d’Antibes, you can walk for 20 minutes or 2 hours, right from the hotel.
A great thing to do in Antibes is to visit the old medieval town and its Provencal market, very colorful and lively. Walk around it, order a tray of oysters and sit at a café eating them with a glass of white wine, watching life pass by. Just like the French do!
In your region: underrated location, overrated location, personal favorite, new discovery?
My special place in the South of France is the island of Porquerolles, an hour and a half drive from Antibes. It is part of a nature reserve, with beautiful flora. You can only access the island by boat and cars are not allowed. You can only visit it on foot or bicycle. The island has amazing vineyards. Don’t tell anybody—we need to keep it secret…
Underrated: one should always go visit the Gorges du Verdon, the largest European gorges!
Overrated: Saint-Tropez in the middle of the summer, way too busy for me!
Favorite hotel(s) in the world (that are not yours)?
Les Prés d’Eugénie in Southwest France, run by Michel Guérard, the three-Michelin-star chef. He, along with his wife, have created a dream, a fantasy, a bucolic and poetic estate. I dream of going back one day.
What is the one thing you wish guests could be better at?
Respecting an elegant dress code at all times 😊
The water sandals are available in the USA from gardenheir!
I so agree with Sophie Volant about dress code- what is lovelier than to be in a gorgeous space surrounded by beautifully dressed people.