Discover my favorite vacation destination in Italy ⛱️

+ bring Italy to you with a local recipe

This weekend I am continuing to recover from surgery and am again (re)sharing one of my most popular newsletters from my archives - if you’re new around here, there’s a chance you’ve not seen this newsletter, and even if you have, everything included holds true still!

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I met Raffaele and Lidia over 30 years ago when we made our first family vacation down the Lazio coast to Sperlonga in the southernmost area of the region. We'd never been to Sperlonga before; back then the town was quite out of the way and only accessible using the Via Flacca, a narrow, costal road. Decades ago most foreign travelers went further afield to Sicily, Sardegna, to other better known seaside spots. 

Our daughter Giulia was not yet a year old and we were seeking a safe family spot to enjoy the seaside and fresh salt air. Through a family friend from Lenola, a small town in the mountains above Sperlonga, we were introduced to Lidia and Raffaele. They rented rooms in their seaside home to vacationers: other families and all Italian. It was just what we were looking for; we loved the fact that we would be staying in the family home of locals from Sperlonga, yet in a small separate apartment with its own entrance. At the time, I worked in Rome and took the commuter train back and forth to Rome each day and left Giulia in the care of an au pair. Most weeknights and every weekend we spent in Sperlonga.