My Year without Clothes : 68. That's Amore!

Still Bellagio

It's five am and I'm waking in large room in what was once a stone home for 15century fishermen. Around me are the enormous, ornate villas of the Italian aristocracy, who spent their time organising frescoes on their ceilings and stupendous artworks for their walls. They'd come here, to Lake Como, escaping the heat or cold of Milan, just 60km away.

Old Como smuggling boats

Or they'd help smuggle Jews to Switzerland, driving them over the border, just 30km away. I can hear the water lapping, rain dripping off mossy tiles, the occasional whine of a speedboat.

I'm leaving this morning for "home". Sydney. I don't know if I'm excited or sad. Home isn't a concept for me, and that itself is an alien feeling. I've always had a lover or a husband and children to return to. I don't have that and I don't have a home, or a car. When I return I will have to find somewhere to live, remove my remaining bits of furniture from storage, start making a living again. For months my questions have been "what now?" In three days it will be "how now?" My children are grown and making their own lives, and I don't really fit in there. I think they'd like me to be the sort of mother who'd plant their vegetables and babysit their cats, but I've spent so long travelling, I'd want to take off before the tomatoes turned red.

Right outside my door, Bellagio

I've been away from "home" since January. Almost six months. I am so comfortable about the rigours of travel now, and the delight in different environments, that I could carry on for what seems like indefinitely. My cases are a bit heavy, because I've fallen in love with Italian fashion and I am delighting in looking sophisticated and elegant again. I've bought a few lovely pieces of clothing; chosen by weight, crushability and suitability for the unknown path ahead. My hair is long; if I have to tie it up, it goes into a tortoiseshell clip at the side of my head - only Americans wear ponytails. I've found that I am less invisible with a bit of makeup, and as my eyes are my "best" feature, I am making them up to advantage.

Bellagio rooftop

Yesterday I was taken for an Italian who can speak very good English. I'm greeted in Italian, and I'm replying with confidence, and with the correct accent, but that about sums up the extent of my linguistic journeying. All that will improve when I return to Venice in September, and attend the language school.

If I wasn't returning to Italy in nine weeks, I'd be very depressed about returning to Sydney today because I'd be returning to where I was, and left, six months ago.

So here I am getting down on my knees and thanking every person I've met along the way, and every experience that happened as a result, that has brought me to be able to return here to begin a life I could never have imagined. If you asked me what I wanted most in the world now, I couldn't come up with a better answer than I'm going to Create and Learn in Venice. I could add that I would like to be discovered by an aristocrat and be ensconsed in a villa, but I don't know if I'd really like that, right now. I'm still not quite "ready" for that sort of adventure, and right now, too, I don't want anything to come in the way of returning here for Phase Two of this Great Big Adventure.

Garden at Villa Melzi, Bellagio

When I was 21, I left South Africa to visit my father in Kent. I'd booked to go skiing in Switzerland. I was attached to a young man who went to America, from where he proposed, and asked me to go there to get my ring. My father said, don't be mad, go skiing first. I didn't. Instead I spent what would have been the skiing week sheltering from a terrible tornado in Toledo, Ohio. The relationship didn't last because I met G. Years later, I was in London, again, working on British TV, when G asked me to return to South Africa to marry him. My father said, don't be mad, you have a job that other young girls would kill for. I returned, and that blew up and I stayed in South Africa until I married a man who took me to the windy part of Australia and I never returned to London. Years later, still in windy Australia, I fell in love with a Maltese man who had a family castle on Comino that he'd offered me to renovate. We'd live in Europe and I'd teach in the castle. That life turned upside down when I went away for a long weekend and he met someone else and married her before I'd returned. I was more upset about losing the chance of a castle than losing him.

All my "I shouldn't have done that" decisions were based on my affections for a man. I will never do that again. If things go haywire I want to be able to say I caused that, not that I followed my heart into a decision that changed my life in a negative way. So for now, I'm putting thoughts of an Italian aristocrat into a very nice Italian shoebox, storing it in the boot of a very nice Italian car, and going my own way.

Outside Bellagio apartment

I don't know if I have fundamentally changed in the past six months. Certainly, I look much healthier. My skin isn't grey. My eyes are clear and sparkling. I laugh a lot. I've put on a bit of weight but I actually prefer to look buxom and womanly than grey and miserable. I have a radiating confidence in my ability. Someone asked me how I was "going to manage" in Venice. I have no idea. I'll do each day as it happens with the knowledge that it is my choice.

Bellagio

Ending phase one here in Bellagio, on the shores of Lake Como has been ..... I'm struggling for words. I am surrounded by beauty the likes of which I haven't seen. Pale mists lick the lake shores, and wisp around marble statues in the gardens of Villa Mezzi. The waters of the lake change colours every hour, from grey to blue to green to mauve to taupe; the surface is pocked and smooth and churned and swept and angry and mirrored. Mountains rush up to the sky to fetch snow and crash down the other side in dense forests of oak. At the base of the mountains, dipping their toes in the lake, are hundreds of little villages and towns, each with a distinctive personality and style.

Typical Varenna lane

Yesterday, our final day, Dawn and I caught the ferry to Varenna, in such dense rain that it was like travelling through the fog. We'd spent the morning on Bellagio shopping for lace lingerie confections, as my K Mart uber uplifts were ditched in Istanbul. We lunched upstairs in the Heaven Room at Divine Comedy, on provolone, pizza, formaggio in various guises and liberal glasses of vino bianco, as the rain hurtled across the rooftops and inverted umbrellas, drowning out the love songs to Italy played on American radio. Dawn and I were sharing my Kathmandu silver collapsible umbrella, until a shopkeeper decided that it didn't match her orange and black outfit and gave her a bright orange umbrella of her own.

Varenna on Lake Como

The weather has been mostly imperfect since we’ve bee on the lake; but with its own mysterious beauty. On my last day on the lake - in teeming rain - I left my camera in the apartment; knowing that I’d be sorry, but lugging the extra 3 kilos a day have recently been exhausting me. But Varenna in the rain is possibly more beautiful than in the sun. The houses dip their foundations in verdant hydrangeas of every colour of purple, lilac and pink, deeply saturated colours in the rain. Pathways were mirrors reflecting the exquisite 15c villas, the worn walkways were dappled with pink petals and grey water lapped our feet. Fishermen leaned into the rain from overhanging rocks curtained with ivy, hauling their catch. Simple shops selling jewellery or silk scarves perched on medieval rock promontories, with views through ancient arches across the water to villages a ferry ride away. Light caught glasses of campari, bounced off umbrellas and kayaks and reflected off stones. Even the ducks shone wetly.

Terrace at Hotel du lac, Varenna

I stood on the terrace of Hotel Du Lac, looking up to the mountains, some still covered with snow, out across the water where yachts were looming in the rain, and up to the villas. A wedding was to begin in a few minutes and a sultry singer was warming up her Italian and English repertoire. Rose petals fell at my feet from mossy ancient urns. Drizzle curled my hair. Arias rang in the air. Tears welled in my eyes. And rolled down my cheeks.

On my last day in Italy, I stood on one of the most beautiful places I have seen in my extensive travels this year - possibly even in my life ... and shed tears. For being in Italy. For the long months I’ve been away. For the joy of being here, in this miraculous place. For having to go “home” - in name only, if only temporarily. I don’t want to leave Italy. It’s been the most spiritually rejuvenating place of my travels, where I have burst out of my tangled past into a sunny clearing of wondrous possibilities.

Varenna from ferry

We walked up the slippery, dark lanes, down the uneven cobbles, under mossy arches and across wobbling bridges. Verenna is the quaint fisherman’s village of the lake, compared to the haute and pomp of Bellagio. But I loved it more. Halfway to the ferry to return to Bellagio, as the clouds darkened and lowered, we turned back to eat our last supper at a waterside restaurant. The rain came in so hard visibility diminished to fifty metres, and the yachts on the lake seemed to vaporise in the mist. The mountains across the lake vanished into a fog, then returned looming to tantalise, then vanished again under a torrent of rain. Jetties were submerged, and drenched ducks came into the restaurant to shelter. I took pictures on my iphone. When the rain eased slightly we rushed back across the rolling jetties and cascading rockside walkways to get the second last ferry to Bellagio for the night, battling under our soaked umbrellas and squelching in our battered shoes.

Missing our ferry by minutes, we had an hour to kill until the last one or we’d have to spend the night there. Two sopping cyclists who’d ridden from 2000metres high and Switzerland limped into the shelter, shivering and soaked to the bone. They hobbled across the road with their bikes to the Hotel Olievo, for deserved coffees. They were seated at a warm table and served their coffees immediately. Like two orphans in the drain, we watched them with envy, then decided to do the same.

So there was still time for another misadventure! There were four or five empty tables at the restaurant. It was almost nine pm and the heavens were emptying themselves on the Hotel Olievo in Veranno. Rain coursed in rivers past the terrace where we shivered, cars slushed and made mini tsunamis into the flower beds. No sane person would be out on a night like this. We sat down at a table. The following happened completely in Italian, which made it much more dramatic and theatrical. As with all Italian interactions, the more excited the conversation, the higher the volume and the faster the speed. The woman who had shooed Dawn away a week ago when she needed a loo stop, had the memory of an elephant and still had it in for Dawn, obviously because she was much prettier, sexier and obviously had a life. Glowering fr behind her (mama mia) cheap reading glasses, she told us to leave as we were not eating. But we want coffee! we said - you haven’t even asked us! Go, she said, you can’t sit here - practically lifting me by my shoulders - you must sit there, pointing to a table half of which was in the rain, the other half of which was a receptacle for the dripping awning. It’s wet! said Dawn. The chairs are wet! Bo, with a shrug, if you want coffee, you sit in the rain. This is not a bar.

You want a drink, you go up the hill to the bar - pointing into the veiled wet distance where we couldn’t even read signs. I pointed to the cyclists, warm and sheltered. But they’re having coffee! The woman huffed. They are guests in this hotel! You lying cow was the literal translation, they’re not they’re catching the ferry with us. If you want to sit, you sit at that table in the rain, curling her nose up as if we had leprosy or as if (mama mia) were wearing bad shoes.

Dawn refused to sit. I pulled the table further under the shelter, but the woman pushed it back into the rain. Dawn said, I will stand here and embarrass all of you until you give us a table. The cyclists picked up their coffees and said, if you don’t give them a table, we will take our coffees to the ferry station. The woman said no no, you stay here. With a look of loathing, she offered us to share the table with the cyclists. We said, No, there are four tables here that we can sit at but you want us to sit in the rain?

Dawn told her we worked in tourism. I told her I was doing updates for travel books. Dawn added a few words like donkey, and moron, and idiot, and worst Italian insult of all - you are letting your side down. My brother slept with your mother - or words to that effect. The other diners had stopped eating or watching the rain and were laughing and shaking their heads at the goings on. The woman stomped away. Other people who had come after we’d arrived already had their coffees or menus and wine. I sat at the wet table. Dawn stood behind me with her orange umbrella. The woman eventually returned and with a gritted teeth Senori, commanded we sit down, this time at a less wet table, slightly out of the rain. We ordered a hot chocolate and a macchiato. They cost as much as the pizza we’d had for dinner along the jetty, which came with chips and olives and a salsa for the bread sticks. The woman threw the bill down with the drinks, and said Pay Now. What? Do you think we’re going to run away? She hovered over my shoulder. I paid and told her she was the rudest woman I had ever met and she should be ashamed of herself. The rain crashed down, the ferry lurched in and when we left, Dawn, who had been scheming to totally unhinge the woman, said .... I’m going to give her a very very dirty look. That should fix her.

Bellagio, by ferry, in the rain

We played charades on the ferry to Bellagio. The windows were fogged up, pale lights teased in the distance, seen through the little rivulets of condensation. Alone upstairs - apart from the shivering cyclists on the other side of the ferry - as only the senseless or desperate would travel on a night like this, we made our own theatre. Dawn mimed four words, a big circle, waves. I shouted out - Perfect Storm! Mo-By Dick-Us! She ran her hands over her body. I shouted out Bo Derek! 10! She made rolling movements again. I shouted out Shark! Pirates of the Caribbean! She pointed upwards, then fluffed her hair out. I shouted out Ancient Mariner! God, you’re hopeless, she laughed, holding her sides, it’s Under the Tuscan Sun! SUN? Mama mia! Non sole! I haven’t seen sun for days!

Walk way to San Giovanni, every day

Back on Bellagio, the taxis had gone to bed so we happily walked the 2 km uphill back to the apartment in the rain. Swanky cars swooshed by as we huddled against the ancient mossy walls that bordered the Villa Melzi, splashing us. Moss dripped from the arched bridges. We passed again the enormous aquaduct that straddles someone’s garden, so large it can be seen from across the lake, and squelched down the winding lanes to the cobbles and the private church that looks like a small White house where the owners of Villa Melzi go to give thanks for their particular slice of paradise. Up the 600 year old steps, into the garden of ancient olives and giant magnolias, to make some strawberry and cherry tea from the leftovers in our fridge.