The picture perfect vacation??? Drink the champagne served on the Titanic (25 euro), hunt for snakes in a lake, truffle hunt in Umbria, watch porn on a beach in Marseille (in that order)
+the best resort in Kenya, a weird slab of pavement in Marseille, hiking to a chalet without showers!!
It seems that every time I log onto my Blog, I feel compelled to ask the same question: What makes a PICTURE PERFECT VACATION?
Is it staying at Alexander Calder’s house? Staying in a storybook? Staying where everyone else stays? (The best sea-facing room at an Instagram famous hotel?) The vague promise of truffle hunting at a resort run by aristos in Umbria? A visit to the wine cellar of an anarchist selling under-the-table ice wine? Taking this guidebook to Key West? What about a private-ish beach in Milos? Is perfect weather enough? Or is it about the unknown medieval town with a great restaurant? A sand beach on an archipelago with a government travel warning? A swimming cove that is really just a hidden slab of city pavement devoid of tourists? A house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright? Should one make a conscientious effort to get off the grid? Or is it as simple as an outfit curated by Jess Graves, a cheap travel steamer recommended by Alexis Page, and hyper-vigilant guest curation? (People say it’s about matching vacation styles—don’t mix game players, rock climbers, and drunks—but I think it’s about finding excellent cooks who will do the dishes and buy things without making a fuss.)
Picture me, please. Vacation, peak August, the French Countryside, the perfect tank, a paperback from 1994. I’m lounging by the pool at an AUTHENTICALLY MARVELOUS HOUSE—say a $6,000/wk rental furnished by the actress Candice Bergen—sunburnt, thinking to myself, “When will he be done with the LRB, and why is he getting it wet?…What kind of person can’t play the piano?” Ugly thoughts about my husband. A classic mistake—relying on visiting churches, trips to the market, novels written in the past five years to entertain.
One must always align a visit to a foreign country with an EXOTIC ANCHOR ACTIVITY, which everything else can coalesce around. The key to this: a massing of people pleasure seeking that anchors you in the spirit of the place. Ideally, it draws lots of, or is primarily made up of, locals. In the Mississippi Delta, something like a Snake Grabbing Rodeo will do the trick. My husband says fly to Serbia for the Guča Trumpet Festival. In Glacier, you can’t go wrong ducking into a western outfitter and hitting a rodeo (stay at Granite Park Chalet the next night, but only if you hike up wine and steaks on ice and say hi to my mom). It is a deeply sophisticated dream of mine to go to Amsterdam for the 10-day Mahler Festival. There’s also an opera festival in Aix-en-Provence (July 4-21, I have tickets). Better for our purposes is the “Fête de la musique” (June 21st in every town in France). They don’t do Gatz in New York City anymore, but that’s the kind of “I flew in for this actually” vibe I’m looking for. There’s a porn festival on the beach this weekend in Marseille. I’m not recommending that. But I am saying your vacation must have a narrative. Or you’re not allowed to post an instagram caption about it. Seriously.
I asked art critic, and friend of my husband, Joe Lloyd to give us the rundown on his EXOTIC ANCHOR ACTIVITY from last weekend. Enjoy!
