Ciao from Sicily & my best travel tips

who doesn't love learning from my mistakes!

Hi everyone.

Thank you for all your kind words on my mom’s passing. I’m so grateful for all of you; I really do feel like I have the world’s best people reading this newsletter. And get this: an adapted version of the newsletter I wrote about my mom will be running as an op-ed in The Washington Post, along with photos of her and her work.¹ 

My mom spent fifty years trying to get her art seen and appreciated by the mainstream art world, and in an effort to help her take the slight less personally, I often reminded her that the most visionary artists are rarely recognized in their lifetime. There’s some kind of irony in her work appearing in a national publication two months after her death, and because I wrote about it. The universe works in strange ways. 

Ciao from Sicily! 

Last year, my partner Daniel and I decided to spend the months of August and September 2024 in Italy. First time for me, millionth for him. Then my mom died in June, and three weeks later his dad died, and two weeks after that we were like “wow, we’re both in a really weird place but I guess we’re doing this Italy thing because it’s all planned and partly paid for and also, what are we supposed to do now?” 

So we said arrivederci to our cats (they’re with our housesitter, although Bryan could probably figure out the stove) and got on a plane to Milan. Our plan was to do a live-work thing, because two months, and our jobs can be done from anywhere with WiFi.²

The listing for the Airbnb we’re in right now said “strong WiFi” but it turns out you can only get a signal outside by the pool (they weren’t technically lying!), so here I sit, squinting at my screen. Behind it is Mt. Etna, an active volcano, and I can see smoke coming out of the top. Travel! Always an adventure. 

My mom, my sister and I only ever took two vacations as a family: to Disney World in 1984, where we piled into one room at the Coral Roc Motel with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, and my two enduring memories are of holding a parrot and (unrelated) running out of gas on the freeway. Our second trip was in 1999, when I was 22, to stay with one of my mom’s art patrons in their third or fourth home in Hawaii. This was when I learned to surf (kinda), fell deeply in love with the Pacific Ocean, and bought orange Crocs way ahead of the curve. 

For the last 15 years or so, I’ve spent the majority of my disposable time and income on travel.³ The visual stimulation of seeing new places feeds me creatively, and there’s nothing like being set down in another culture (or another part of the US, even) to expand your perspective and illustrate the fact that “normal” is entirely a social construct.

To be totally honest, this trip hasn’t been easy so far, which is not a complaint, it’s simply an observation (because yes, boo fucking hoo, I’m in Italy for two months which duh, is an extreme privilege). For various reasons, we’ve done a lot more moving around than we planned, which comes with a lot more problem-solving, efforting, and can-I-do-a-Zoom-call-from-here-ing.

I’ve been sick, it’s been stupidly hot, and I can’t eat gluten or dairy as part of my autoimmune disease management strategy, which I thought I’d be able to easily work around but why did I think that??? I was so dumb!!!⁴ In short: being at home is objectively more relaxing and less expensive. At least eight times in the last three weeks, Daniel has looked at me and said WE’RE MAKING MEMORIES, BABE!

But in my years of traveling, I’ve learned that some trips are for Living Your Best Life and others are for learning. And some are for both. I’ve had the best gluten-free pasta of my life this month, and I’ve strolled romantically across romantic bridges. I’ve sipped incredible espresso at a gas station on the freeway.⁵ I’ve climbed down a rickety ladder into the Mediterranean. I’ve put my hair in a mandatory swim cap and stood in a shower that sprayed my whole body with cold, rosemary-scented mist.

The Italian spa game is kind of legendary. I paid 50 euros for five hours of DIY thermal spa Disneyland on the shore of Lake Garda here and it was one million percent worth it. I frequent any kind of DIY spa as a hobby (meaning, the kind of spa where you pay an entrance fee to use the sauna, steam bath, cold plunge, whirlpool etc. on your own); the only things I miss about Los Angeles are my friends and Korean spas. All the thermal springs in Europe take the spa experience to another level.

I’ve also come to understand that after a lifetime as a city lover, the overwhelming desire for nature and quiet and space that began sneaking up on me three years ago is also inclusive of the travel experience. I am over waiting in line, for literally anything. I have no patience for people live-streaming their brunch. I respect compact European showers for their earth-friendliness, but I also have a new appreciation for my spacious American shower because it never inspires me to sing Fat Man In A Little Coat. I’ve taken like 20 pictures this whole time.

I really love my life at home.

I feel like doubling down on local community.

I’m a different person than I was six months ago.

All of this is good information.

Twelve of my best travel tips

These are all things I’ve either figured out via trial and error, or learned the hard way, like the time in Bali when I dropped off all my laundry three days before my flight back to Los Angeles, and the laundry guy who said he’d have it done the next day disappeared on a bender and nobody could reach him for five days, and in the meantime I had to fly back without any of my clothes, wearing my beach cover-up as a shirt on the plane. (This worked out because I was living in between Bali and LA at the time, so I had a friend who could pick up my clothes for me and hang onto them until I came back a month later. If this hadn’t been the case, it would have been SUCH A BUMMER.)

1. Hospital socks make good plane slippers for long-haul flights because they’re grippy and designed to be thrown away. If you’re not a regular visitor to hospitals, bring a pair of socks to designate as plane slippers. Sometimes your airline will give you paper slippers in coach on an international flight, but sometimes it won’t. You will be bummed if you have to put your shoes on every time you get up to go to the bathroom.

2. When taking an international flight, put a change of underwear, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and face wash in your carry-on.

3. When you’ll be landing somewhere hot, also put a summer outfit and sandals in your carry-on. Change into it while you’re waiting for your luggage.

4. If you’re a coffee drinker, bring Starbucks Via (or similar) instant coffee packets for the plane. You’ll want coffee at the end of a long flight and plane coffee is very bad.

5. If you, like me, are a high-maintenance sleeper who requires a good pillow, bring a light, packable down jacket (the kind that packs into a little sack, like a sleeping bag) and a pillowcase. You can DIY a fluffy pillow by shaking out the jacket, folding it up, and putting it in the pillowcase. If the hotel pillows meet your needs, use the pillowcase for dirty laundry. (And it’s never a bad idea to have a jacket; planes get cold.)

6. If you know shopping will be a focus of your trip and you really want to go crazy, check an empty bag with an empty carry-on inside it on your outbound flight.

7. Always bring an easily foldable nylon tote to use as a beach bag, grocery bag, or shopping bag. In many countries, people bring their own bags for groceries.

8. If you’re going somewhere for 2+ weeks, see if there are Facebook groups for lodging rentals. A lot of Airbnb landlords also rent their places out directly through local Facebook groups. Directly is always cheaper (sometimes way cheaper) because Airbnb’s fees are so high. Some landlords skip Airbnb entirely and just rent directly.

9. Rental car reservations don’t make you pay until you pick up the car, and they almost always have no penalty for cancellation. If you’re planning a trip in advance, you can always reserve a car, then put a price alert on it; if the price drops, cancel and rebook. (This works for US travel too!)

10. If you’re traveling in low season and you’re spending more than a week somewhere, don’t book all your lodging in advance. Book the first couple of nights, then see what looks good when you arrive and get the lay of the land.

11. When you’re trying to figure out which restaurants are actually good and which ones tourists just think are good, filter the Google reviews by local language.

12. If you’re searching for something specific on Google Maps, like restaurants with gluten-free things, search in the local language (in Italy, senza glutine instead of gluten-free). You can try English too, but the local language will yield more results.

I’ll be in Italy for another month; we’ll be in Sicily until September 8th, then driving all the way up to the Dolomites, where Daniel will be shooting some sky running races, a sport I didn’t know existed until last month. It’s like… if running, hiking and rock climbing had an extremely dangerous baby.

If you have any suggestions for Sicily or the Dolomites, or a tip that’s saved you, or any hard-won travel wisdom, please share.

As always, thanks for reading, and for being here.

1. One of the benefits of publishing on Substack is a degree of visibility that wasn’t possible when I was just sending this newsletter out as a regular email. Thank you to the folks who restacked this essay; it caught the attention of a WaPo editor!

2. I took a break from working with people 1:1 for the duration of this trip. I’m continuing to run Zoom mentoring groups from the road, and I’m working on a long illustration job (a book! not written by me! coming next year!), which is also the perfect project to do while traveling. 

3. ICYMI, I don’t have children. Daniel has twins who are seniors in high school, who normally spend 50% of their time with us and 50% with their mom and stepdad.

4. I’ve been eating a lot of rice cakes and carrying around a thing of coconut milk to put in my coffee like the American asshole I am.

5. Italian freeway rest stops have a restaurant/coffee shop called Autogrill which will make you one of the best espressos you’ve ever had. You drink it from a ceramic espresso cup while standing at a counter and then you get back in your car and keep driving.