Anna Rawhiti-Connell recalls a ‘very short, late-bloomers OE’.
In August and September of 2016, I went to Europe to see and travel with my brother. By the time the trip came around, me and Troy, the man I ended up marrying, had been seeing each other for a few months. He’d just been made redundant, so he threw caution to the wind and joined me for 11 days.
It was the perfect combination of solo travel, travelling with someone who’s known you most of your life and the bracing and romantic experience of working out whether you and a new partner can travel together. If you can accommodate each other’s anxieties and neuroses away from home and develop a mutual understanding of the value of having your own passions while finding the things you both love, travel is an ideal test of a new relationship. Italy and Spain were perfect destinations for this. We arrived with preconceived ideas and had them shattered. We kissed under the Bridge of Sighs in Venice and fought, yelling at each other, vowels flat and inflections rising, on La Concha beach.
Where did you go?
I went to Europe, spending the most time in Italy. My brother lived in London, so we organised to go to Brussels, Rome and the Amalfi Coast. I did Paris on my own, and Troy and I spent 11 days in Florence, Venice, Barcelona and San Sebastian.
It was a very short, late-bloomers OE. I’d worked in a corporate job long enough to erase the money mistakes of my 20s. I had savings and just enough confidence to override my risk adverse disposition to travel solo.
Roughly how much did you spend getting there?
Auckland-London return was $2,997, economy all the way baby. This was in 2016. I just checked the same route for the exact dates and was very surprised to find that it’s $300 cheaper. Trains and flights to and from various destinations are lost to annals of time. I just remember thinking any amount of money was worth it to be able to sit on a train, drink giant, cheap cans of beer and eat cheese pizza bread with pesto.
What was the highlight?
The first day in Rome stands out. We arrived to 32-degree heat in time to be uninvited guests at the canonisation of Mother Theresa. I hadn’t slept the night before because I was afraid of missing my flight from Paris. By the time the day ended in Rome, I had been awake for 40 hours. My brother Pete, our friend Hasan and I dragged luggage to luggage lockers and did a four-hour walking food tour with a tour guide who looked like Chris O’Donnell. I got trapped in a tiny elevator, and we were all treated to an hour-long performance by the unofficial mayor of Roma, our wonderful AirBnB host. Highlights included explanations of our apartment’s five-compartment rubbish bins and Rome’s touristic tax.
I love to cook, and my culinary soul is part Nigella, part Bourdain and part Italian. To be in Rome for the first time, sniffing truffles, ogling legs of Parma and sampling Roman street food was every dream I’d had come true. The food tour took us through Testaccio. We ate offal sandwiches, supplì and pizza. We ended the day at Bucotino, eating cheap and delicious pasta and drinking wine and Amaro. The day is memorable because the jokes have become entrenched lore between all of us. My aside to my brother during the ragú portion of the food tour, “But have you tried my ragú?” is now the line we quote when anyone is being hubristic and self-aggrandising in the presence of genuine talent. Our photos of all of us sitting like disgusting rats in the gutter waiting for Paola get sent on birthdays. A digestive after dinner is a habit I still swear by.
What was the lowlight?
Tandem kayaking in San Sebastian. Troy and I rented a tandem kayak to go to Santa Clara Island. We fought in the middle of the bay of Donostia Sea as we went round and round. People on the shore laughed at us. We returned to the mainland after a brief détente on Santa Clara, not speaking. Troy sat mournfully on the beach while I fumed 100 metres away. We did not do tandem outdoor activities for years afterwards.
See any great art?
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and Michelangelo’s David in Florence were standouts. I visited the Tate, Musee d’Orsay, and Uffizzi on the trip but David stands out because of the contrast between his comparatively unassuming home in the Galleria dell’Accademia and the greatness within. It was before the days of carousel posts and stories on Instagram, and if you check my feed, it was obviously a highlight because there were four individual David posts. Front and back. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice is an expression of supreme taste and tenacious vision and is so intimately housed and personal. I still covet her Alexander Calder earrings.
Did you visit any famous spots? What’s your honest review?
Many, but Ravello is worth taking your life into your hands during the bus trip to get there. It’s where Villa Cimbroni is. Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan stayed there in The Trip. I am both a big fan of that film and wary of any spots cursed with becoming known to the unwashed masses (me) through cinema. Ravello is perched high on the cliffs overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. We found a small bar on the grounds of Villa Cimbrone that sold wine and served free olives. We stood on the Terrace of Infinity and took selfies with the marble busts. We bought three bottles of limoncello to take home. Drinking one before waiting two hours for a bus to never arrive was a great idea at the time. Taxis were called, and our carload cheered as we zoomed down towards sea level, free at last.
Review of a food spot you stumbled across by accident.
Pastificio Guerra in Rome. Tuna pasta in a takeaway, plastic container with a plastic fork. It cost four euros, and was eaten sitting on the Spanish Steps. I have spent nine years trying to recreate the oily, salty, flavourful perfection of that lunch. Their pasta is now five euros, which is still a bargain.
What items did you pack that you really needed? And what did you pack that you definitely didn’t?
I’m a planner, performer and shopper. I’m also anxious, aspirational about fitting in, and driven to find the version of me that would live in Paris or Florence. I get a lot of stick for adopting style choices that don’t make it home. I packed a whole wardrobe and then bought a whole wardrobe in London. If you’re travelling to big cities and like to shop, axe half of what you were planning to pack. Forget about sandals or heels, and accept the sneaker.
What is one piece of advice you’d give to someone going?
Do less. I think New Zealanders are naturally prone to cramming in so much when we travel because it’s expensive to get there, and we assume it takes five minutes to get to another country because it’s all “just Europe”. I raced through the Vatican so quickly, crushed between tourists and nuns on iPhones, trying to jam it in before catching a train to Salerno, that I left unsure whether I had seen the Sistine Chapel.
Would you go back?
Tomorrow. I dream of finding a way to take a year or two off, move to Italy or Spain with the dogs, grow tomatoes and perfect pasta al tonno.
