How to Savor Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast at Home

I’ve been home from Italy for a few weeks now, and I can feel the melancholy slipping into my day to day. You know the feeling: for the first few days back you’re still floating around on Sorrento time, telling anyone who will listen about your adventures. And then somewhere around week two your overloaded inbox takes over and the Amalfi Coast glow fades until it just disappears. 

And I’m not just being dramatic (ok, maybe a little). There’s actual research showing that whatever happiness boost a vacation gives you tends to fade within about a week of getting back to your routine, no matter how long you were gone or how far you flew. How sad is that?

But let’s not dwell on the sadness. If Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast taught me anything, it’s that La Dolce Vita isn’t something you experience two weeks out of the year and then long for the other fifty weeks. It’s a mindset and handful of habits that you can build in to your daily life. 

So, here’s what I’m stealing to create that La Dolce Vita feeling right at home.

Take the walk.

Every night in Sorrento, right around sunset, the whole town would pour out onto the streets: couples, grandparents, teenagers, everybody just… walking. No destination, no agenda, just the passeggiata. I wrote about falling in love with this ritual a couple years ago, and my husband and I still take a walk on most nights before or after dinner. It’s not the same as the stone streets of Positano. But it’s free, it takes fifteen minutes, and it works every single time.

Make the pasta.

Remember the boat day out of Sorrento? Our captain took us to a beach in Nerano for spaghetti alla Nerano, the zucchini pasta that a woman invented on that exact stretch of sand in 1952. But it doesn’t have to be a decades old recipe to put you in the right mindset…making even a simple pasta dish with fresh ingredients will do the trick. Even better, try your hand at making your own pasta, it’s really not as hard as you would think. Then….pour some wine, throw on an Italian playlist that will surely include Volare, and turn a random Tuesday into something worth remembering.

Let there be lemons.

The Amalfi Coast does not do subtle when it comes to lemons, so why not embrace the lemon love? Put a bowl of lemons on the counter. Zest one into everything you cook this week. Light a citrus candle. This sounds like a small, silly thing, but smell is apparently the fastest route we have to memory, more direct than sight or sound, because it skips straight to the emotional part of the brain instead of the analytical part. A few minutes of breathing in the lemons and you’ll be back on the balcony if only in your mind.

Wear the souvenir.

If you came home with a gorgeous scarf or a pair of handmade Italian sandals, or anything else somebody actually made for you while you stood there and watched, wear it. A souvenir sitting in a drawer is just clutter with a nice backstory. One you actually put on your feet becomes a built-in excuse to tell someone about the trip all over again.

Give yourself an aperitivo hour.

Before dinner in Italy, there’s always this pause: a small drink, something salty on the side, and no rush toward the meal. You don’t need to be on Capri for this. Pour something prosecco around six, put out a little cheese or a bowl of olives and nuts, and give yourself fifteen minutes before you start cooking or answering that one last email. Think of it as a lovely transition between work-you and home-you.

Slow the whole meal down.

In Italy, dinner is the event, not a box to check before mindlessly scrolling Instagram in bed. Multiple courses, nobody rushes, conversations that run long past dessert and limoncello. You don’t need to cook three courses on a Monday when you can barely hold it together after along day at work. But you can pick one night a week to stretch dinner past the usual twenty minutes. Set the table like you mean it – buy the flowers, use real napkins, bring out the good china. Leave your phone in the other room and Voila! 

I fully recognize that none of this is Sorrento. And I think we can all agree that we’d much rather be in the far off places we long for. Nothing replaces the real boat, the real cliffs, the real lemon groves, or the actual Italian family making you a decades old pasta on the beach. But what you can do is borrow a little of the mindset now, keep the anticipation alive, and let it carry you to your next trip and your next adventure. 

Ciao,

Jennifer