Ciao a tutti,
How are you? It’s still sweltering here in Rome and I think it will be like this until the end of September at this stage. On days when it’s already 30 degrees celsius by 8am, I’m closing my eyes and thinking about the crystal blue waters I was swimming in only a few weeks ago.
A very quick trip from Rome, I headed to the island of Ponza for a long weekend with one of my best friends for a girls trip/reunion. The last time I’d seen my friend, we had just finished travelling around Puglia together (sans car, but that’s a whole other story), and having a few days of pizza eating in Napoli. We had met when we both first moved to Italy in 2019 at the best language school in Bologna - she had planned to spend 6 months in Italy learning the language and went on to travel around before an extended stay in my favourite place in Sicily; Ortigia!
We travel really well together (not an easy thing to find) and felt like a few days of lying on a beach, soaking up the sun, and drinking spritzes. If this sounds like your idea of a good time too, then you should visit Ponza!
It’s an easy trip from Rome as you just hop on a train to Anzio from Roma Termini which takes about an hour. From there, there’s a ferry that departs once or twice a day and is just 90 minutes to island paradise.
Ponza seems to still be relatively undiscovered by English speakers so it was a change of pace from some of the other popular islands in Italy like Capri and Ischia. It’s pretty tiny at only 7km long too, and not built up. There’s the gorgeous colourful houses which look a little like Procida and gorgeous crystal blue waters to swim in. As a first time Ponza visitor, a quick Google Search led me to discover that Gillian McGuire is the absolute Ponza expert and we followed all of her tips whilst there.
You can rent a boat for the day, discover the island Palmarola, or just keep things super chill and jump on a water taxi to visit the beach club which is what we did. Probably the only disappointment we had was that the food options at the beach club aren’t great- but hey, the beautiful shimmering water more than made up for that.
So if you’d like to get a little bit off the beaten track for a couple of days whilst in Rome, and fancy some beach time, I totally recommend Ponza. It was perfect for us as you don’t need to hire a car there either and was easy to reach from Rome with public transport.
Now that I’m back in Rome, I’m delighting in meeting several Instagram friends in real life. It’s always a bit strange because you really get to feel like you know someone so well through Instagram even though you’ve never met in person! I had the pleasure of meeting Pia Gavi and her husband from Melbourne. Pia is the author of ‘Pia’s Table’ cookbook and also runs cooking classes and food tours in Melbourne.
I also met the lovely Michele from Intrepid Italian! Michele is also from Melbourne and moved to Rome some years ago for a 2 year stint before moving to London where she’s been for the last 8 years. You might remember I’ve done a few IG lives with Michele on her learning Italian courses. In case you’re interested you can have a look here at her travel language course or longer Italian courses.
As well as meeting new friends, I was so lucky to see one of my very good friends from home as she’s here on holiday with her husband. They were in Florence for just a day, so I hopped on the fast speed train and made it to Florence in time for a big delicious lunch. It was really disgustingly hot (40 degrees celsius) but so worth it to see a friend I’ve not seen in over 3 years! She’s a massive foodie (she literally started Co-Lab Pantry, an online gourmet food destination in Australia) so I took her to Trattoria Sostanza and it more than delivered.
If you haven’t been here, I highly recommend it. We ordered the tortellini in sugo, artichoke omlette/tart, butter chicken (their most famous dish), fresh cannellini beans in EVO, and cake with raspberries. Delicious! Florence is a great and easy day trip from Rome and one we’ll do more often after the weather cools down.
This weekend we have more dinners with friends (including another Australian friend visiting!), and then my Canadian-Italian foodie friend is coming to stay for a few days. We’ll be heading out early to do some exploring or market shopping before taking refuge back at our apartment to escape the heat. We’ll re-emerge after 7pm when things cool down a little to go out again.
I hope you have a beautiful week wherever you are! If you enjoy my newsletter, I would love if you would forward it or share with your friends or any Italy loving people you know. So much is lost on Instagram and with all the algorithm changes, you can barely see content from creators you follow anymore, so I’m enjoying the idea of newsletters more and more.
Xx Liv
Thank you for the mention!! I am so happy to hear that you loved Ponza. We need to meet in real life too & I will share my Ponza stabilimento lunch secrets 😉