La Dolce Vita

Widely held as the best description of a hangover, I give you The Bonfire of the Vanities:

“The telephone blasted Peter Fallow awake inside an egg with the shell peeled away and only the membranous sac holding it intact. Ah! The membranous sac was his head, and the right side of his head was on the pillow, and the yolk was as heavy as mercury, and it rolled like mercury, and it was pressing down on his right temple… If he tried to get up to answer the telephone, the yolk, the mercury, the poisoned mass, would shift and roll and rupture the sac, and his brains would fall out.

“Something had happened last night. These days he often woke up like this, poisonously hung over, afraid to move an inch and filled with an abstract feeling of despair and shame. Whatever he had done was submerged like a monster at the bottom of a cold dark lake. His memory had drowned in the night, and he could feel only the icy despair. He had to look for the monster deductively, fathom by fathom. Sometimes he knew that whatever it had been, he couldn’t face it, and he would decide to turn away from it forever, and just then something, some stray detail, would send out a signal, and the beast would come popping to the surface on its own and show him its filthy snout.”

It wasn't that bad, but after four months of holidaying - which equates to four months of eating out three times a day and answering every question (dessert? drink? five-course lunch? fried breakfast?) with Why not? We're on holiday! - we decided that seven days in Italy would be spent detoxing. The injustice, we were entering the world's gastronomic epicentre only to deny ourselves all the wonderful booze, cheese and carbs on offer. 

We spent the first four days in Emilia Romagna, dining on scrambled eggs, espresso, Tagliata and grilled vegetables and drinking sparkling water. All were excellent, but really! 

We caught the high-speed train to Florence and joined the throngs of Americans clogging up every street and alleyway in the beautiful city. The Uffizi was closed for renovation and our plans to finally see Michelangelo's David - we'd only seen a replica at the V&A in London - were scuppered as the Accademia di Belle Arti is closed on Tuesdays. We ate gelato and wandered through the Boboli Gardens before boarding the bullet back to Bologna.

Firenze: serenity far above the madding crowds

The view from Boboli of Palazzo Pitti

Ponte Vecchio

Another replica David, but still no original

Not a bad beat

We were amused to read that renaissance artists such as Michelangelo sculpted small penises as they were deemed more "elegant".

Matt was eager for us to spend a few days on Como, our favourite spot in Italy since we'd first visited Bellagio in the summer of 2004. We went back a couple of years ago for my birthday and had a memorable meal of spaghetti vongole and rosato in Como town. I'd found an agriturismo online, which sounded perfect - overlooking the lake and surrounded by forest.

After a relatively quick drive on the autostrade and a few dead ends heading up a steep hill, we found ourselves on a near-vertical narrow dirt track hellbent on proving that our micro-rental was not up to the task. In the end, we gave up and turned back. There was no mention of access issues on their website, but even with a 4X4 only the most intrepid explorers could hope to reach the summit.

€70 a night for this billion-euro view

Hotel Glavjc in Torno

We drove on to Como town and found a hotel through the tourist office. After one night in a hideous modern hotel in the middle of an industrial subdivision half an hour south of the lake, we found a 70s monstrosity with billion-euro views clinging to the hillside between Como and Bellagio.

Lunch in Bellagio

We had lunch at the edge of the lake in Bellagio breaking our detox to drink rosato and eat pasta. It was glorious. Then we settled in at the Lido, a spot we'd discovered during our first visit to Bellagio. The owners of our campsite also owned the Lido, essentially a bar with a bunch of sun-loungers on sand beside the lake. It had been renovated since our last visit and was channeling Ibiza with its louche vibe, good music and white upholstered furniture.

Como's waters run deep at 400 metres to the bottom

Matt loves to swim and so was in and out of the lake as I lay on the sun-lounger contentedly reading a book. He asked me to swim with him so I ventured down to the jetty and furtively dipped a toe into the glacial water. It may have been August, but we were at altitude and Como is one of the deepest lakes in Europe so the water was far from warm. I backed up, telling Matt it was too cold for me. He blocked me and a relentless debate about whether I should or should not enter the water ensued.

It reached its pinnacle when Matt told me that I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't get in, which seemed very melodramatic to me. Then he upped the stakes and said that if I did a running jump into the lake, he would never ask me to do anything again. I retorted that he was a liar and that I have never been paid out for any of the countless bets I've ever made with him before impulsively running and jumping into the lake.

Bellagio's Lido

I can confirm that it was indeed very cold. Afterwards, I sat, leaning back against Matt, perched at the bottom of an unused slide suspended over the lake's calm surface. It was a spectacularly beautiful day - the sun shone from a cloudless sky, refracting off the still silent lake - and we both gazed happily across it. Somehow in the next few minutes, after some debate about the merits of marriage and utter confusion on my part as to what we were talking about, Matt proposed and I accepted.

A toast to our hypocrisy!

A bottle of Mumm was uncorked and we found ourselves engaged.