I came back to the villa just before midnight, exhausted after a full day of travel and a two-hour drive from Nice.
By the time I’d clicked the key into the lock, I was so ready to climb into bed and sink back into the magic that I didn’t realise how tired I was.
In the days that followed, all the hummingbird-like sweetness was still here – in the shape of spritzes and gorgeous neighbours and Friday night aperitivos. It’s just I wasn’t ready to see it.
In short, my first week back in Italy was really hard.
The hire car dilemma
For the past week in England, I’d been conspiring with Claude on the hire car situation.
Did I take the cost of hiring a car for three weeks on the chin and accept that this wasn’t a forever solution before I drove my own car down? Did I accept being on the mountain without any kind of transport, reliant on a bus I wasn’t sure existed to get to and from town? Or did I buy a Vespa?
I went for the third option.
On Wednesday afternoon, I went with my landlady to Savona to try out scooters.
“Well, you’re not getting that one. Not for the mountain,” my landlady firmly but sweetly stated with her hands on her hips as we looked at a row of sweet second-hand Vespas. “I won’t sleep at night. Those wheels are too small.”
My Italian can stretch to ordering a coffee, so the exchange between her and the salesman went completely over my head. They both looked at each other and then at me, shook their heads, and agreed that the only solution was, quite possibly, the safest-looking and bulkiest motorbike you could imagine. A far cry from the bright red Vespa I had in mind.
It was also $5,000.
I stuck with the hire car. Which meant spending Saturday afternoon driving to Nice to swap the car for another model.
Running on empty
For such a long time, I’ve been operating as a “one more thing on the to-do list” – starting work around 7 am and finishing around 10 pm.
When I’m tired like this, my mind always turns against my body.
For me, stress shows up as skin flares and bloating. It’s a vicious circle; I’ll start picking at my skin and criticising my body, especially my thighs and the paunch that hasn’t gone away since I was in my mid-twenties. And I’ll feel worse and worse until I barely recognise myself in the mirror.
On Saturday morning, I decided to take things as slowly as I could.
I didn’t want to spend my time in Italy chasing endless to-do lists, imagining that pleasure lay after that final thing was ticked. So, I went to Sanremo, a province famous for its roses, to find a red rose for the villa: in part, a homage to the container I’ve been in for six months.
So focused was I on securing said rose and cactus that I left my passport behind and only realised when I was at Nice airport, after checking in the car and pushing the cactus, rose, and fuchsia in the suitcase trolley. I looked totally mad.
“It’s not possible.”
“What? Can I not use the car I’ve checked in? I have it until nine – the man downstairs said it would be okay.”
“No.”
“Right.”
Fuck.
I asked if I could leave the cactus, rose, and fuchsia in the corner of the airport. My phone was about to die, and I had six hours on the clock to get to the villa – two and a half hours from Nice – and back again before they closed at twelve. If I missed it, I’d be put down as a no-show and lose the money I’d already spent on the car.
The timing was tight.
The guy at the counter wrote down instructions to get as close to Finale Liguria as possible, and I took them and ran to catch a train bound for Ventimiglia.
Thinking I’d just be moving between cars, I hadn’t packed a jumper and was just wearing a thin dress. Suddenly, as the sunshine began to fade, it got very cold, and my phone was at 16% battery. And I’d left my phone charger at the counter.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I tried remembering the book on existential kink by Carolyn Elliot. What’s the kink in this? If I can embrace whatever pleasure my subconscious is taking from being stranded in France, maybe a solution will appear?
None did.
The final stop was at Menton, and I pleaded with a taxi driver, explaining my route.
“Non. C’est fou. To Italy? Non.”
The two taxi drivers shook their heads.
Then, I tried Uber with my last 10% battery, and by some miracle, a driver accepted this crazy 300km round trip: the only way I was ever going to get back to the villa and to the airport on time. His name was Yassine, and after I explained where I wanted to go, he let me in, and we set off.
What proceeded was a five-hour Uber journey that went a little like this:
- A two-hour French and English lesson for the both of us. I taught him how to say “Look Mum, no hands” and, on his request, “Close the door gently”, and he taught me how to flirt in French, Italian, Spanish, and Arabic.
- After three hours driving and a lot of persuading for him to follow the narrow roads winding down to the villa, I made us espressos sweetened with honey, and we chatted in the kitchen, lit by the overhead oven light. By this point, it was 8 pm. He read the Arabic on a plate hanging up in the hallway and said it read “Free Palestine”.
- “Emma, you are beautiful. Why you live alone?” he asked in the doorway. At this, I shook my head – doing the internal math on how much danger I was in. “And you made this espresso with love. You trust a lot.”
- I’m not sure how or why, but this man, who had gone from flirting and showing off how to drive with no hands down the highway, softened somehow. When we got back in the car, he asked what music to put on, and we ended up listening to Stevie Nicks, Edge of Seventeen.
- As we approached the airport, he suggested sleeping and put on “Music for Sleep Meditations” for the final hour. Once we reached the terminal, he waved off the toll fees for his return to Menton. “Je suis contente d’avoir fait ce parcours,” he said, reaching for a cigarette.
The fuchsia medicine
Along with the rose and cactus, I bought a fuchsia after reading Dr Ifey Ihonor, a medical doctor turned cacao herbalist and founder of 8Within, who writes about its medicine and message:
“The only person who can give you love (in the form of recognition) you seek… is you.”
And I think this chapter of feral-fuchsia-solitude is asking for a different kind of trust.
Trust that yes, through thick and thin, you’ll always have yourself to chop wood, light fires, turn soil, drive across a border three times in a day, and hold yourself in the exhaustion, the expensive mistakes, the silly moments, the funk. All of it.
But at some point, you also need trust in others, even when that feels naïve and sometimes desperate.
Sometimes, it works.
About Pasta Nipotina
Follow for updates on moving to Italy on the digital nomad visa, stewarding a plot of land in a regenerative olive grove, Ligurian recipes (naturally) and grandmother medicine at IG: @pasta.nipotina.
