Benvenuti—I am glad you found this new Substack space—a meeting point, a place to share travel news and thrilling—or mixed—experiences, to post recipes, food and garden news, bulletins from home, great reading, recs/ links, and maybe gripe a little about those times when travel = travail. Please join with your comments and recommendations. I will be sure to read all and, of course, will respond to questions. Starting this newsletter feels exciting—like hauling out the carry-on and starting to pack. I have written several travel-focused books with great pleasure. Now, I’m interested in the more fluid, spontaneous possibilities of a newsletter, which can be easily updated and more flexible.
Through my books, you may already know that I always am balancing a desire to just go with equally deep instincts for staying home. I love the settled world of my book-lined study, cosy dinners with Ed and family at our round table, Sunday morning gatherings with friends to discuss books and create art. Home! The place where you make your plum jam. Keep your treasures (ha, mostly acquired in travels). The place where your saved letters and family photographs are stacked in the attic. The house, as Bachelard revealed in The Poetics of Space, should protect the dreamer. At home, I have a strange feeling that the house shelters the person I dreamed I would be: a writer, free, a dreamer of voyaging in the world, a safekeeper of those I love.
But you travel—and you are away from resting on the palm of that protective, outstretched hand. You’re loose in the chaotic world. I recently went in for a hepatitis shot before a winter trip to Asia.
My doctor gave me fifty pages on health issues, political warnings, alerts of all kinds. Apparently, there are bugs everywhere waiting to pounce. Necklace-snatchers, pickpockets, or worse. But what if, I thought, nothing bites. No one grabs my bag.
The world is out there, so juicy and dazzling and surprising. In traveling you meet what doesn’t seem normal to you. Defamiliarizing inspires you to break assumptions. “Items may have shifted,” as the flight attendant tells us. Crossing cultural contexts destroys ignorance, which we’re full of when we haven’t seen a country ourselves. (Oh, the misconceptions about Asia and Africa!)
Besides, I want to sample what I’ve never eaten or poured. Taste the place. For those living there, these are the tastes of home. And so you learn by pulling up a chair at a foreign table.
I like to read the literature of countries as I travel, trace the architectural history, and talk, talk, talk to those who live there and have been shaped by local history, forces, and landscape. Travel: How the aperture widens.
I read a lot of place-centered books. But armchair travel is no substitute for the rush of arriving in Paris in the rain and suddenly glimpsing the boulangerie where you’ll soon be inhaling the scent of baking baguettes. Home, without travel, loses a dimension. But, I’m convinced, constant travel would leave me adrift. When I am creaky, I will have a million memories and plenty of luscious books to take me from Istanbul to Tunisia, even to the Golden Isles of Georgia, which I have loved all my life.
The road to the airport and the road to home—best to take both. Va e Torna (Go and Come Back), the Italians say. So, let us meet here often to explore roads taken.
Wheels Up
Will King will be joining me from time to time. He’s the consummate traveler, and I depend on him for good advice. He’s super adroit at finding the best hotels, flights and rates and especially at locating the most interesting restaurants. Just out of university (NYUShanghai), he is only 22 but has traveled extensively. He made his first Atlantic crossing at four weeks old—to visit us at Bramasole, our home in Tuscany, and he has loved going to Italy every year of his life. He’ll be sharing his discoveries and humor. Since his reading list is quite exploratory, he’ll report on his finds, which have widened my scope. Will is my grandson. What luck!
Coming next: I’ll start with one of my most loved Italian destinations: Puglia, way down in the heel of Italy’s boot and washed on both sides by ethereal waters. With four friends, we rented a traditional house, and…
What a surprise gift 🎁!! Frances, I’ve been hoping for another memoir…just love you and your world, and your wise comments on everything!
This is the best place for you to land!
Welcome 🫶🫶
A rare sanctuary in todays online world! Thank you!