穿越意大利的蜜月之旅

A Honeymoon Through Italy
穿越意大利的蜜月之旅

The trip began years before we met, when Sara wrote a short story about the perfect marriage. It started like this: “____ and I are moving to Europe to paint and make love, right after he finishes his diamond floor. We will live in a gigantic home filled with magic and passion. One of our favorite things to do in the summer will be to drive our ’68 Ferrari to the end of Italy and take a boat to a tiny island with nothing on it. There, we will have a picnic at sunset, fall asleep with blankets and small furs and wake up in the morning and go home. …”

这趟旅行在我们认识的前几年就已经有了雏形。那时，萨拉在写一篇关于完美婚姻的短篇小说。小说是这样开头的：“刚铺完菱形地板,____便和我前往欧洲，我们在那里画画，缠绵。我们要搬到一个满是奇妙与热情的大房子里。夏天，我们最爱做的事，便是开上68年产的法拉利，一路开到意大利的边界，再乘小船去一座空荡的小岛。在那里，我们日落时野餐，盖着毯子和毛坎肩入睡，第二天上午醒来，再启程回家……”

Two years after she wrote the story we fell in love. Two years after that, my name filled the ____. And two years later, we finally got around to planning our honeymoon. I hadn’t yet started the diamond floor, but I suggested we recreate the story anyway: We would fly to Venice, take the train to Tuscany, rent a vintage car, hop a boat to Sicily. It would be a dream come true, an old-fashioned, three-week bridal tour through the most romantic country in the world. It was extravagant, but that’s what honeymoons are supposed to be.

她写完这个故事的两年后，我们相爱了。又经过了两年，那篇小说的“____”里，填上了我的名字。另一个两年过去，我们终于抽出时间来计划蜜月之旅。我还没像萨拉的小说里写的那样铺菱形地板，不过，我提议，我们还是可以再现小说中的情节：先飞到威尼斯，然后乘火车去托斯卡纳，在那里租辆老爷车开，再跳上小船去西西里岛。这样一来，一场穿越全世界最浪漫国度，为期三周的新婚怀旧之旅的梦想就可以实现了。这么做虽然奢侈，不过，这才叫蜜月。

Threading the needle along the Amalfi Coast.
穿行在阿玛尔菲海岸。

The whole notion of honeymoons has been fanciful, if not bizarre, since they came into fashion. The tradition may or may not have been handed down from the ancient custom of “bride kidnapping.” The Norse word “hjunottsmanathr” means to “go into hiding,” and some historians say that it referred to the period between abducting a woman and the moment her family stopped looking for her. Deuteronomy 24:5 is more generous, stating that a newly married man should “be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken.”

蜜月的整个概念，自流行以来，即便不令人匪夷所思，也让人充满想象。这个传统或许传承自英国古风俗中的“抢婚”。挪威语中“hjunottsmanathr”一词指的是“躲藏起来”，据一些历史学家所言，该词指女士被抢走后，她的家人从寻找她到不再寻找的这段时间。《申命记》（Deuteronomy，《圣经》旧约的一卷书。）24章5节中陈述了更详细的说法：新娶妻之人，“应在家清闲一年，使他所娶之妻快活。”

The phrase “hony moone” appeared in the mid-16th century. Some connect this to a supposed Babylonian practice of giving the bride and groom a month’s supply of honey wine and sending them away for a cycle of the moon to conceive a child. Thomas Blount’s 1656 “Glossographia” describes the more accepted, and fatalistic, definition, declaring that a new marriage, “is honey now, but will [fade] as the moon.”

“蜜月”一词出现自16世纪中期。有些人认为该词与古巴比伦流传的一个民俗风情有关：婚后，新郎和新娘会得到一个月的蜂蜜酒，并要离开一个月亮盈亏周期的时间（古巴比伦人根据月亮盈亏作为计时标准，月亮盈亏一周期大约28天。）来孕育新生命。托马斯・布朗特1656年出版的《词集》中，用宿命论来诠释蜜月：新婚“固然像蜜一样甜，但也会像月亮一样（有圆有缺）。”这一说法，更被大众所认同。

A lot has changed since then. More than three-quarters of couples asked whether they’d be taking a honeymoon said they would, according to the Knot’s research on its members in recent years. The average length is eight days. Most couples pay for their own honeymoon, and most trips are international, costing more than $5,000. More than half of them check Facebook from their trips. The number of couples who go on their dream honeymoon is about one in four.

时至今日，蜜月也发生了很大变化。根据爱结网（The Knot，美国在线量交易额最高的婚尚资讯平台。）近几年对其会员的调查显示，超过四分之三的夫妻在被问到是否度蜜月时，都给予了肯定回答。蜜月平均时间为八天，大部分都会选择出国。新人们通常自己承担旅费，平均花费5000美金以上。超过一半的夫妻旅行时查看Facebook。而其中大约1/4的爱侣实现了自己梦想中完美的蜜月旅行。

We were no Vikings but this would be a chance for us to both vanish while at the same time live out a dream version of our life. Our love was still beaming when we boarded a flight to Venice in April. The T.S.A. and a jam-packed 767 dimmed it for the next 12 hours, but a middle-aged woman holding our newly shared surname on a placard in Marco Polo Airport lifted us from the malaise. I hadn’t used a travel agent in 20 years but a friend, thankfully, advised it.

我们不是维京海盗，不过，这对我们来说却是一次可以双双神秘消失的机会，而且还能过过梦想的生活。四月启程飞往威尼斯时，我俩还是满面笑容。可安检完，又在挤得透不过气的767机舱里坐了12个小时，就有些让人不快。不过刚下飞机，在马可波罗机场见到一位中年女士，手里拿着写有我俩姓氏的接机牌迎接我们时，那份身心的不快也得以舒缓。近20年，我出行都没找过旅行社。这次多亏听了朋友的话。

My first question to our agent, Cindy Goldberger, was how to take the train from the Venice airport to our hotel. Her response: “You don’t. You take a boat.”

我问旅行社的工作人员辛迪・戈德伯格的第一个问题就是怎么从威尼斯机场坐火车去酒店。她答道：“不用。你们坐船去。”

Our private launch picked us up a few hundred yards from the airport terminal. Five minutes later we cut across the Venice Lagoon ― golden sun burning through the fog, luggage stacked on white leather seats, the air heavy with the smell of boggy wetlands.

我们的私人汽艇在机场候机楼几百码外接上了我们。五分钟后，抄近路穿过威尼斯泻湖。阳光隐约穿透迷雾灼热着，行李堆在白色皮椅上，空气中弥漫着沼泽湿地般的气息。

It was the first week of April. The sea breeze was cool, and the sun was powerful. We passed the auburn terra cotta roofs of Murano and the grassy fields of Le Vignole. Our captain, who hardly seemed to notice that we had climbed aboard his boat, pointed to the east and we watched the rambling skyline of the Bride of the Sea lift above the horizon.

那是四月的第一个星期。海风清冷，日光灼灼。我们路过慕拉诺赤褐色的陶土屋顶，又穿过了里维尼欧雷绿草如茵的田野。那位几乎没注意我们已经上船的船长向东指了指，于是我们看见了地平线上空映照出“海之新娘”（the Bride of the Sea,指威尼斯）的轮廓。

A white-jacketed concierge met us at the Belmond Hotel Cipriani dock. The Cipriani sits on the island of Giudecca, a five-minute boat ride from Piazza San Marco. Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter and a half-dozen other heads of state slept there. George Clooney was married there. Giacomo Casanova himself was said to court maidens in the gardens around the Cipriani spa.

一名穿白上衣的接待员在奇普里亚尼贝尔蒙德酒店(Belmond Hotel Cipriani)的码头等着我们。奇普里亚酒店位于朱代卡岛，离圣马可广场有五分钟航程。玛格丽特・撒切尔，吉米・卡特和另外六位国家首脑都曾在贝尔蒙德酒店留宿。乔治・克鲁尼在这儿举行了婚礼。据说，“情圣”卡萨诺瓦在花园里曾向姑娘们求过爱。

Three footmen carried our bags from the boat, and another guided us to a 30-foot buffet of croissants, cured meats, biscuits, salads, fresh fruit and 20 platters that I didn’t, and still don’t, have names for. There was Champagne. There were five cheese wheels. There was something that looked like soufflé but wasn’t. There were 13 varieties of bread. We ordered omelets and mimosas and sat in the sun, fully immersed in the dream.

三名服务员从船上搬出了行李，另一位服务员带我们到了餐饮区。30英尺（约9米）长的自助餐台上堆满了牛角包、腌肉、饼干、沙拉、新鲜水果和20大盘我始终都叫不出名字的美食。有香槟，有五种奶酪制成的奶酪卷，还有一种甜点看着像舒芙蕾，却又不是舒芙蕾。有13种不同的面包。我们点了煎蛋卷和含羞草鸡尾酒，坐在阳光下，尽情沉浸在梦幻中。

Venice has been a sanctum of decadence since the Middle Ages. After fleeing from the Goths, Avars and Huns in the fifth and sixth centuries, Venetian merchants built a maritime empire on the city’s 117 islets and ruled the Adriatic for half a millennium. Venetian businessmen traded with India, China and Persia for the most precious jewels, fabrics, spices and goods. The finery drew businessmen, royalty and travelers from all over the world.

威尼斯自中世纪以来一直是堕落的殿堂。在五、六世纪短暂地被西哥特人、阿尔瓦人和匈奴人侵略过后，威尼斯商人在这座城市的117座小岛上打造了一个海洋帝国，并统治了五百年之久。威尼斯商人从印度、中国和波斯购买最珍贵的珠宝、衣料、香料和商品。华丽的服饰吸引了来自世界各地的商人、皇室和游客。

When lovers during the belle époque reworked the classic “voyage à la façon anglaise” ― a painful, very British honeymoon tradition popularized in the early 19th century, in which the entire wedding party traveled around the country visiting guests who could not make it to the wedding ― many boarded trains and steamers for Venice. Rules of the new honeymoon: drink, eat, sleep in and practice, as the Bible puts it, “acts of the flesh.”

身处“美好年代”（belle époque，19世纪末至一战爆发前，这段时期被认为是欧洲的一个黄金时代――编者注）的情侣们重现经典的“英式旅行”(voyage à la façon anglaise)――十九世纪初期流行的一种费时费力的英式传统蜜月，整个婚礼派对期间都要去各地拜访没能参加婚礼的亲友――很多人都会乘火车或轮船前往威尼斯。新婚蜜月的四项原则：吃好、喝好、睡懒觉，还要如《圣经》所言，行“情欲之事”。

We slept for 13 hours our first night at the Cipriani, on a king bed with goose down pillows. The next day we took the hotel launch, a vintage mahogany Venetian motoscafo, to Piazza San Marco and meandered along the canals. We crossed 14 stone bridges and eight piazzas, ending up at the Gallerie dell’Accademia beneath huge oils painted by Titian, Giorgione and Tintoretto. That afternoon we sat under a honeysuckle tree and watched the murky water slide by. It was 38 degrees and raining at home in New York City. It was 75 on the Rialto Bridge with poufy clouds and a pale blue sky that looked like a painting straight from the Renaissance.

在奇普里亚尼住的第一晚，我们枕着鹅绒枕头，在大床上睡了13个小时。转天，乘坐酒店的汽艇――一艘不错的威尼斯式红色汽艇――去了圣马可广场，又沿着运河漫无边际地漂流。我们路过了14座石桥和8个广场，最后停在了威尼斯艺术学院美术馆,美术馆上方挂着提香、乔尔乔涅、和丁特列托的巨幅油画。那天下午，我们坐在一颗忍冬树下，看着浑浊的海水缓缓流过。那一刻，纽约气温华氏38度，正下着雨。而在里亚托桥上，却是华氏75度，淡蓝色的天空中飘着朵朵白云，这里的一切看上去简直像文艺复兴时期的油画一般。

That night we ate at an old-style restaurant called Antiche Carampane. A sign in the window warned “No Tourist Menu.” We ordered bay scallops caught in the lagoon, roasted fennel, artichoke salad and baby squid with pasta in ink sauce. The waiter told us how the walls of Venetian buildings are built like boats: three layers of wood and a lacquer finish. Once a month, he said, during the full moon, the ocean fills the restaurant with three feet of salt water. The staff puts chairs and rugs on the tables the night before and comes to work early to mop up the place before opening for business.

那晚，我们去了一家叫Antiche Carampane的老式餐厅。窗上的指示牌写着“不提供游客菜单”。我们点了从泻湖里打捞的海湾扇贝、烤茴香、菊芋沙拉和小墨鱼墨汁意面。服务生告诉我们，威尼斯房子的建造方式和船只一样，都是三层木板加一层漆面。每次月圆之时，海水会涨潮灌进餐厅三英尺高。工作人员要在涨潮的前一晚将椅子和地毯放到桌子上，转天开业前又要提早开工把椅子和地毯拿下来，打扫干净。

There had been at least 5,000 people in Piazza San Marco all day. At midnight that night it was empty. I happened to have our wedding mix saved on my phone and played it from my shirt pocket as we danced over the polished cobblestones. The air smelled like wood smoke and we could hear the low rumble of vaporetti cruising the Grand Canal. San Marco’s bell tower was a dark obelisk against the silvery moonlight. As we twirled over the scaffolding the buskers use during the day, I felt happy and hopeful and thought of a favorite line from “Jane Eyre”: “our honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.”

圣马可广场每天最少都有5000人，那一晚的游客却寥寥无几。正巧我的手机里保存了我们的婚礼配乐，我把手机放在衬衣口袋里，与妻子在光滑的鹅卵石地面上跳舞。空气中飘着柴火烟的味道，听得见大运河上的水上巴士发出低沉的辘辘声。圣马可钟楼在银色月光的映衬下如同一座深色方尖塔。当我们舞至平日里街头艺人用的脚手架旁时，我觉得很幸福，生活充满了希望，这让我想起了《简・爱》中我最喜欢的一段：“我们的蜜月清辉会照耀我们的一生，它的光芒只有在你我进入坟墓时才会消亡。”

We felt like one of the lucky couples on a dream honeymoon the next morning, traveling 175 miles an hour on a train through the farmland surrounding Padua, Ferrara and Bologna. Travel agents are soothsayers in a sense, and Cindy had, correctly, predicted a hangover after our weekend in Venice. Instead of bickering our way across the city on three hours of sleep, we glanced at our itinerary, ate breakfast at the Cipriani and waited for a private motoscafo to take us to the train station.

第二天早晨，坐在时速175英里的火车上，穿越帕多瓦、费拉拉和博洛尼亚周边的田地时，我们觉得自己就是那1/4的幸运儿，正在实现我们的完美蜜月。旅行社从某种程度上说，真是预言家。辛迪猜对了我们在威尼斯过完周末后，肯定会来一场宿醉。为了避免因为只睡了三个小时而在前往火车站的路上互相埋怨，我们看了一眼行程安排，决定在奇普里亚吃完早餐，悠哉哉地等着私人汽艇载我们过去。

Ermanno Gallo met us in Chiusi, Tuscany, four hours later. He was a tall man with what looked like a volleyball hidden under his shirt. He works for Zephyrus Classic Car Rental and handed me something that changed our lives for the next three days: the keys to a 1981 Fiat 124 Spider convertible. My father drove the same car in his later years and, since he died before Sara met him, I thought she could commune with him on a kind of spiritual voyage à la façon anglaise.

四小时后，在托斯卡纳的丘西，埃尔曼诺接待了我们。他个子很高，健壮得看起来像在衬衣里面塞了个排球。他在西风经典汽车租赁公司工作，他递给了我改变我们未来三天生活的东西：一把1981年产的菲亚特124 蜘蛛敞篷车的钥匙。我父亲晚年时开过一模一样的车。由于萨拉在他去世前并没见过他，我觉得她能通过这场心灵上的英式旅行与他相互交流。

Classic cars sit somewhere between the pope and Leonardo da Vinci in Italy, especially one that Enzo Ferrari’s chief engineer helped design. Children on the side of the road yelled, “Bella macchina!” as the 124’s double overhead cam purred through vineyards and cattle ranches in Val di Chiana. The swath of farm country is two hours south of Florence and runs north-south on the border of Arezzo and Umbria. We hung a right near Il Passaggio up a cyprus-lined driveway to the Villa di Piazzano, the regional cardinal’s old headquarters and our home for the next two days.

古董车在意大利的地位介于罗马教皇和李奥纳多・达・芬奇之间。尤其是恩佐・法拉利首席设计师参与设计的古董车。装载着双制定凸轮轴发动机的菲亚特124敞篷车嘟嘟驶过瓦尔笛基亚纳的葡萄园和牧场时，路旁的孩子们欢呼着：“好漂亮的车”！这片农业地区离佛罗伦萨南部有两小时的路程，南北紧邻翁布里亚和阿雷佐。我们在I1 Passaggio右转，上行经过一条弯弯曲曲的马路，到达笛皮萨诺别墅(Villa di Piazzano)，这里是当地红衣主教的旧总部，也是我们未来两天的家。

Tuscan villas haven’t changed much since the Renaissance. They are cold and austere in early April. We dropped our bags in our room and were back in the Fiat 30 minutes later. Ermanno had given us driving gloves, for me, and a scarf, for Sara, but no map. We didn’t need one. The 360-degree view with the top down was so perfect, so reminiscent of driving scenes in our favorite Fellini and Antonioni movies, we simply followed the road wherever it went.

托斯卡纳的别墅自文艺复兴时期后，变化并不大。四月初时分的别墅看上去老旧而简朴。在房间里卸下行李后，不到30分钟，我们又回到车里。埃尔曼诺给了我驾驶手套，给了萨拉围巾，却没给我们地图。不过，也不太需要。从上到下，360度的景色都是那么完美。开着我们最中意的法拉利，放着安东尼奥尼的电影，车窗外的视野令人无比惬意，随便开到哪里都好。

An hour later it zigzagged up a steep hill to Castiglion Fiorentino, a medieval city built on fourth century B.C. Etruscan ruins. We drove until the road dead-ended in a parking lot, then climbed six flights of stone stairs to the only cafe open in town.

一小时后，曲曲弯弯开上一座陡峭的小山，来到了卡斯蒂廖菲奥伦蒂诺(Castiglion Fiorentino)，这是一座在公元前四世纪的伊特鲁里亚(Etruscan)废墟上建造出的中世纪城市。我们开到尽头的停车场，又上了六节石阶，到了城里唯一营业的咖啡厅。

Hollywood posters and memorabilia from the 1950s hung from the walls, and a giant picture window looked out at the green spine of the pre-Apennine mountains running northwest toward Florence. The bartender set out goat cheese and figs, tapenade bruschetta and mini slices of pizza and served us $3 glasses of the best merlot we had the entire trip. The scene was ridiculously picturesque, straight out of a 1990s romantic comedy. We were both travelers ― me a writer, Sara a photographer ― who had somehow wandered into each other. And here we were, together, on the greatest journey of our lives.

咖啡厅里的墙上挂着好莱坞的海报和50年代的纪念品，从巨大的落地窗向外望，看得见西北走向延伸至佛罗伦萨的亚平安山脉前的山脊。服务员端来了山羊乳干酪和无花果，还有蒜蓉面包和小块披萨，给我们倒了整个旅行中最好喝的3美元的梅洛红酒。这里的风景如诗如画，简直像一幅90年代的浪漫喜剧片。我们两个都是旅人，我――一名作家，萨拉――一名摄影师，我们漫步进彼此的生活，并在此刻，一起度过着生命中最美好的旅行。

The International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family states that: “More than an initiation into marital roles, the postindustrial honeymoon is a ritual that is socially framed as the most romantic juncture in one’s life. The honeymoon is about forming one’s self-identity as romantic, and couples make honeymoon choices as a means to secure their individual and shared romantic identities.”

《国际婚姻家庭百科全书》(The International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family)中说：“不只是婚姻生活的开始，作为一生中最浪漫的时刻，后工业时代的蜜月更被社会定义为一场仪式。蜜月可以证明一个人的浪漫，夫妻共同决定度蜜月是一种即能保障他们的独立性，又能分享浪漫身份的方式。”

A few days later on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, steps from a store where my father bought my mother a ring shortly after they were married, we were happy that we chose to act out Sara’s story. It came from a dream, and in many ways the ritual of the honeymoon is a fantasy. It is an escape from your life, job, stress and every other hassle associated with modern life. It is a chance to be together, undistracted, and not much else. As the “hony moone” myth suggests, it might be your last to do just that.

几天后，在佛罗伦萨的维琪奥桥，我们走进了一家商店。我父亲婚后不久曾到这家商店买过一只戒指送给母亲，我们很开心选择了按照萨拉的小说来度蜜月。这篇小说起源于一个梦想，而在很多方面，蜜月的仪式也是梦幻的。它让你从生活、工作、压力和现代生活中的所有烦恼中解脱出来。它让你们有机会在一起，心不烦神不乱，别无其他。就像“蜜月”这个说法所暗示的那样，它也许是你最终要做的事。

My uncle, who lived in Italy for years, taught us the Italian word for newlyweds: “sposini.” If you are sposini, he said, everyone in the country will treat you as if it is your birthday. The word came in handy a few days later when we followed the final leg of our fantasy on a ferry bound for Sicily. We had spent a couple of days on the Amalfi Coast ― walking Ravello’s gardens that inspired Richard Wagner, touring Capri and hiking between medieval cliff towns that Norman kings once ruled ― and the car rental return was more complicated than expected. I ended up pulling the sposini card to get a security officer to let me on the boat, 18 minutes before it departed.

我叔叔在意大利生活多年，他教过我们一个形容新婚的意大利词：“sposini”。如果你新婚，他说，这里所有人都会让你觉得像过生日一样。后来的几天，我们按照最后的行程计划乘渡轮去西西里岛时，还真的体会到了这一点。我们在阿玛尔菲海岸待了好几天，在曾给过理查德・瓦格纳创作灵感的拉韦洛公园漫步，到卡布里岛游玩，还在曾被诺曼帝国统治的中世纪悬崖小镇间远足。但最后在退租汽车时遇到了一点儿麻烦，因为手续我们预想得繁琐很多，我们差点错过了轮渡。我只好打出了“新婚”这张牌，拜托工作人员让我们上了船，18分钟后，船就开了。

Discount airlines have decreased ferry traffic considerably in Italy, excluding an exceptionally colorful group of elderly and teenage working-class travelers who crowded a blue-carpeted lounge bar that night. We ordered negronis and retired to the poop deck, where we watched the sparkling lights of Capri slide past the gunwales.

在意大利，打折机票抢占了不少轮渡交通的客户，不过对老年人和青年工人阶级的旅行者这种群体并不优惠。那晚，在铺着蓝地毯的酒吧里，出现最多的，也是他们。我们点了内格罗尼酒，躲到后舱甲板上，看着卡布里岛的闪闪灯光缓缓划过舷缘。

A blasting horn woke us in our family cabin ― double bed, bathroom, shower, TV ― at 6 a.m. the next day. Mount Pellegrino stood above Palermo harbor, alongside a half-dozen other forested mountains. The air and sky are different in Sicily ― bigger, wider, like Montana in a way. D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, lived on the island longer than anywhere else the embattled couple holed up during Lawrence’s self-imposed exile.

我们睡在有双人房、浴室、淋浴器和电视的客舱里，第二天早晨6点就被刺耳的喇叭声吵醒。佩莱格里诺山坐落在巴勒莫港，它的旁边还有六座被森林覆盖的山。西西里岛上的空气和天空有些不同――这里的天空更大更广阔，有点像蒙大拿州。在D・H・劳伦斯（英国作家，著有《查特莱夫人的情人》）那段自我流放的岁月里，四面楚歌的他和太太弗里达在这里生活过很长一段时间。

The raw scenery, laid-back Sicilians and history dating back thousands of years are exotic and fascinating. Of sailing into Palermo, Lawrence wrote in “Sea and Sardinia”: “The fantastic peaks behind Palermo show half-ghostly in a half-dark sky. The dawn seems reluctant to come. Our steamer still smokes her cigarette ― meaning the funnel-smoke ― across there. So, one sits still, and crosses the level space of half-dark water. Masts of sailing-ships, and spars, cluster on the left, on the undarkening sky.”

原始的景色，悠闲的西西里岛人和几千年可追溯的历史全都充满着异域风情，又那么醉心迷人。航行至巴勒莫时，劳伦斯曾在《大海与撒丁岛》中描述过：“巴勒莫身后迷人的山顶如幽灵般出现在半明半暗的天空下。黎明好像迟迟不愿到来。我们的汽船依旧抽着她的香烟――船上烟囱冒出的烟――一驶而过。于是乎，我们静坐在船上，随着船只穿过半明半暗的平静海面。桅杆和船柱都在左手边，在还未黑透的天空上。”

We walked from the ferry terminal to our hotel, dropped our bags and kept walking. The marina was crammed with fishing boats and weather-beaten sailboats. The streets around Dominico Square were as narrow as a refrigerator. Structures were a pastiche of Norman, Gothic and Greek architecture, most old and layered with grime.

我们从渡轮码头散步回酒店，放下包，又出去散步。小码头里停满了渔船和饱经风霜的帆船。多米尼科广场周围的街道拥挤得像被塞满的冰箱。这里的建筑都是仿造诺曼、哥特和希腊的建筑风格，大多老旧而布满层层尘垢。

Beneath the tarnish, Palermo is the kind of city where you stumble across exquisite things. We almost stepped on a late-Roman mosaic, “The Four Seasons,” while looking for a public bathroom. We found the bathroom a half-hour later, in the largest opera house in Italy.

而在尘垢之下，巴勒莫属于那种能让人偶遇绝妙事物的城市。我们在寻找公共卫生间时，差点走进了一家名叫“四季”的罗马晚期风格的镶嵌工艺店。半小时后，我们才在一所意大利最大的歌剧院里找到了卫生间。

We saw the 17th-century Quattro Canti, an intersection with sculptures of four kings of Sicily, one on each corner. The air smelled like lilacs and the ocean in the Orto botanical garden, and we bought an old canteen at a sprawling flea market in Piazza Marina. That afternoon we haggled for groceries at the 1,000-year-old Ballarò market, where fishmongers cut crimson slabs of swordfish to order and vendors sold blood oranges, pecorino fresco and marble-size capers.

我们见到了17世纪的四首歌广场(Quattro Canti)，它坐落在一个交叉口，四角分别是西西里四位国王的雕像。奥托植物里的空气有股丁香花和海洋的味道。我们在滨海广场的一个跳蚤市场上买了一个旧水壶。那天下午，我们在开了1000年了帕拉莫市场的杂货铺里讨价还价，市场上的鱼贩把旗鱼切成深红色的厚片售卖，小商贩出售血橙、佩克利诺干酪和弹珠大小的刺山柑。

It is bizarre how swiftly the days go by ― on a vacation, in life. It’s nothing new, but you feel it more on a special trip. I remember my parents talking about their honeymoon as if it were a thousand years ago. Ours was right here, and there was some pressure to end it as perfectly as it began.

说来也怪，假期里的日子过得尤其快。其实也没什么特别的，但你却能从这场特别的旅行中感受到更多。我记得父母聊起他们的蜜月，仿佛那是一千年前的事了。我们的却已在眼前，而怎样如完美般开始地有个完美的结尾着实叫人压力不小。

We drove to Cefalù early the next morning for our last few days in Italy. The headland that the little fishing village is named for lurches up 850 feet from the center of town and holds the ruins of every culture that ever settled there. We had rented a tiny apartment with a large deck that looked out on the mile-long beach extending from town. We made pasta alla norma the first night, a Sicilian classic with sautéed eggplant, penne and ricotta salata, and watched the ocean morph from blue to indigo to silver to charcoal.

第二天一早，我们驾车驶向切法卢(Cefalù)度过在意大利的最后几天。这个海岬小渔村因镇中心耸起850英尺的陡坡而得名，岛上保留了曾扎根在这里的每一种文化。我们租了间带甲板的公寓，向外望去可以看到从镇上延伸出的一英里长的沙滩。头一晚，我们做了诺玛红酱意面、西西里经典嫩煎茄子、通心粉和乳清沙拉塔，我们看着海洋从蓝色变成了靛蓝色，又变成银色，最后变成了炭灰色。

The next day we acted out the final scene of Sara’s story, packing a picnic and hiking the headland. Four older men charged us $5 each at the entrance of Madonie Park. The trail zigzagged to a gate in a tight draw, situated to defend “La Rocca,” which was occupied by the Greeks, Syracusians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans. Halfway up the path we saw a pre-Hellenic Temple of Diana and mounds of clay that were bread ovens at one time. There was a pine forest near the temple, and after charging to the summit and back we laid out lunch on a picnic table.

第二天，我们完成了萨拉小说中最后的情节――野餐和海岬徒步。四位老人在马多涅公园的入口处收了我俩每人5美元。小路曲曲弯弯通向一扇紧锁的大门，当年这里曾被希腊、西那库斯、罗马、拜占庭、阿拉伯和诺曼占领，这扇大门是为了保卫“拉・罗卡”(La Rocca)而设的。沿着小路爬了一半的时候，我们见到了月光女神戴安娜的希腊神殿前身和曾是面包烤炉的土堆。神殿的附近有一片松林，走过松林再向前，就到了顶峰和山后，我们在一个野餐桌上吃午餐。我把在跳蚤市场买到的旧水壶里装上了酒。我俩抿着小酒，吃着用锡纸包好的茄子三明治，老鹰在头顶的苍穹翱翔而过。

I’d filled the old canteen we bought at the flea market with wine, and we sipped it and ate eggplant sandwiches wrapped in foil while a hawk glided just above the canopy. The ocean reflected blue light through the pines, and a sea breeze hissed through tall grass on the mountainside. There were no small furs or blankets, and we were not going to sleep under the stars as in Sara’s story. But we had lived close to the fantasy for a moment and that was enough for us. Love waxes and wanes. Life is a dream. Sometimes you get to live as if you’re in one, too.

大海透过松树反射出蓝盈盈的光，海风穿过山旁的长草嘶嘶作响。没有毛坎肩，也没有毯子，我们也没像萨拉的小说里写得那样在繁星下入睡。不过我们已经很接近梦中的情景了，这对我们而言，已足够。爱有圆满，也有缺憾。生活如同一场梦。有时，你要活得好像已在梦中。

If You Go

如果去意大利你需要知道――

Traveling from north to south in Italy requires a plane, train, car and boat. Venice’s airport is terrific and typically inexpensive to fly into, and the city’s Santa Lucia and Mestre train stations connect to just about everything south with high-speed and local service. Trains don’t go to the Amalfi Coast, so rent a car in Naples. Most ferries to Sicily leave from Naples as well. Be sure to reserve a sleeper cabin as most trips are overnight.

在意大利自北向南旅行需要乘坐飞机、火车、汽车和船。威尼斯机场很不错，飞到那里通常都不贵，那里的桑塔露琪亚(Santa Lucia)和梅斯特(Mestre)火车站可以通往所有南行的高速路和地区服务站。火车不到阿玛菲海岸，可以在那不勒斯租车开。从那不勒斯出发的汽艇，大多数也到西西里岛。由于大部分路程都在夜里，所以别忘了订一间卧铺舱。

Where to Stay

住宿

The Belmond Hotel Cipriani (Giudecca 10, belmond.com/hotel-cipriani-venice) is the gold standard in Venice. Four minutes from Piazza San Marco, it is an oasis of gardens and far from the tourists and people who sell trinkets that mob the piazza. The Olympic-size saltwater pool is the hotel’s centerpiece during the day ― George Clooney named a few of the drinks at the pool bar ― and the newly renovated Oro Restaurant is a hub for foodies and celebrities at night.

奇普里亚尼贝尔蒙德酒店（The Belmond Hotel Cipriani，位于Giudecca 10， belmond.com/hotel-cipriani-venice）是威尼斯的金星酒店。离圣保罗广场有四分钟路程，它的花园可是个怡人的去处，远离游客也没有广场上那群卖廉价饰品的人。白天，标准大小的海水泳池无疑吸引了最多的住客――乔治・克鲁尼还给泳池吧台几杯饮品取了名字――而到了晚上，新装修的奥雷餐厅(Oro Restaurant)便成了各路吃货和名人们的聚集地。

The Villa Di Piazzano (Località Piazzano, C.P. 6, villadipiazzano.com) is in a 15th-century manor house set in the rolling farmland of southeast Tuscany. The rooms are huge, with 600-year-old beams and modern bathrooms. The hotel offers a cooking school, alfresco dining on the terrace and hiking trails through the mountains.

笛皮萨诺别墅酒店（The Villa Di Piazzano，位于Località Piazzano, C.P.6, villadipiazzano.com ）是一座建于15世纪的庄园，坐落在托斯卡纳东南部起伏的农田中。房间十分宽敞，屋内有600年历史的横梁，也有现代化的卫生间。酒店里可以学烹饪，可以在户外阳台就餐，还可以徒步山间小路。

The Palazzo Avino (Via San Giovanni del Toro 28, palazzoavino.com) in Ravello is worth the drive up the hill from Amalfi. Built in what was once a 12th-century private villa 1,000 feet above the Tyrrhenian Sea, the hotel has 32 strikingly appointed rooms and 11 suites. Get one with an ocean view and burn off your love handles at the outdoor gym, then relax in a pair of hot tubs on the roof deck.

帕拉佐拉维罗酒店（The Palazzo Avino，位于 San Giovanni del Toro 28, palazzoavino.com）位于拉韦洛，从阿玛尔菲海岸驾车上山，是个值得一探的去处。这家酒店坐落在第勒尼安海(Tyrrhenian Sea)上1000英尺高的山间，曾是12世纪的一家私人别墅。酒店有32间锦天绣地的房间和11间套房。订间海景房，在室外健身房燃烧掉赘肉，最后双双在屋顶平台的浴缸里泡个热水澡。

Where to Eat

餐厅

Trattoria Antiche Carampane (San Polo 1911, antichecarampane.com) is set close to the Rialto Bridge in Venice, but is well off the tourist map. The tiny storefront and modest décor are fitting for a 30-year-old local favorite. The simple but perfect scallops and branzino are house specialties, as is the cellar full of local Veneto wine.

Antiche Carampane餐厅（San Polo1911, antichecarampane.com）位于威尼斯里亚托桥)Rialto Bridge)附近，但在地图上却没有标注。临街的小店，朴实的装潢，深得而立之年族群喜爱的本地餐馆。简单却十分可口的扇贝和柠檬鲈鱼可是这里的招牌菜，酒店的酒窖里也备满了威尼托的本地酒。

There aren’t many restaurants like La Mescita (Via degli Alfani, 70; 39-333-650-0273) left in Florence. The place is tiny, with 24 seats, and serves “plates” like homemade tortellini in a sauce made from fresh veal, cheese, mushrooms and tomatoes. Steps from Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia, it’s not uncommon to see students sharing a plate of salami toscano, mortadella, pecorino Romano and prosciutto crudo served with heaps of Tuscan bread.

在佛罗伦萨，像La Mescita（位于degli Alfani,70;电话：39-333-650-0273）这样的餐厅并不多见。这间小餐厅只有24席，供应的食物有用嫩牛肉、奶酪、蘑菇和番茄自制的酱汁意大利饺子。因为毗邻佛罗伦萨艺术学院美术馆，不难见到三五学生共享一盘托斯卡诺萨拉米、摩泰台拉香肠、佩科里诺干酪和意大利熏火腿配一大堆托斯卡纳面包。

Going to Cumpà Cosimo (Via Roma, 44, 39-089-857-156) in Ravello is like going to your grandmother’s. Netta Bottone has been serving traditional Ravello dishes in the 300-year-old cantina for more than six decades. The lasagna and misto ― a pesto with whatever pasta Netta feels like making ― are out of this world and the salads are fresh and feed the whole table. Meats come from Netta’s own butcher shop next door and tiramisù might be on the house, if you’re nice.

还可以去Cuspà Cosimo餐厅（位于Roma,44,电话：39-089-857-156）,这家餐厅在拉韦洛，走进它好像回到了你的外婆家。内塔・博托(Netta Bottone)在拉韦洛一家有300年历史的传统小酒吧服务了60多年。千层面和什锦拼盘――香蒜酱配上内塔认为适合的任何意面――味道真是好得不得了，而且沙拉新鲜，量又足。肉品则取自隔壁内塔自营的肉品店，如果他喜欢你，还会请你吃提拉米苏。