Ferie
August is a very important month for italians.We have written about the all-important holiday that bookends most Italians’ vacation time, Ferragosto, but what is Ferie?
Simply put, Ferie is a yearly vacation or annual holiday. The month of August, thanks to the heat and often oppressive humidity, has every Italian escaping their sweltering homes and venturing to cooler locales. Italians generally look for respite from the heat in one of two places – il mare (the sea) or le montagne (the mountains), and often it is to the same place every year.
After 7 years, we have finally (and perhaps wisely) joined in on this country-wide tradition. We blocked our calendar from custom tour clients for the entire month and headed to our mountain home in Abruzzo. Our village is generally empty most of the year, but come August the population balloons up with all of the residents returning from their ‘big city homes’ for a huge extended family reunion, our village’s Saint Day and a respite from the heat in the cooler mountain air.
Abruzzo, as a region, is known as “the green lung of Italy” and is designated “the greenest region in Europe” because almost half of its territory is designated as national parks and nature reserves that border mountains and sea. Abruzzo is a great place ‘to ferie’ because its mountains offer exploring and its seaside relaxation. You can visit both in a day.
For us, ferie in Abruzzo is a month of exploring: our village festival, picnicking in the mountains, lunching at mountain chalets enjoying arrosticini fresh off the grill or at a trabocchi eating fish yanked from the sea just before hitting our plates, sunning ourselves at Bau Beach (a dog beach that deserves its own post), and then returning to our cool home to escape the summer evening heat. We like to think we are ‘doing as the Italians do’.
As expats, we are still learning the ins and outs of ferie. For instance, going to the grocery store on August 14th is tantamount to going to Costco on the morning of Superbowl Sunday…only holiday essentials (Aperol, briquettes, watermelon, etc) are sold out because we don’t have Costco with its limitless supplies. If you want to visit anywhere (and I mean anywhere - a shop, restaurant, art gallery, every place), you must call first…and even then, if they tell you they are open, they may not be there when you arrive. You must ALWAYS have a Plan B, and probably a Plan C up your sleeve in Italy the month of Agosto.
Despite the Plan B’s and C’s, so far this ferie, we have learned:
to slow down and ignore daily stresses
to breathe in the cool, fresh mountain air deeply so that it fills our lungs and exchanges any bad air lingering in our organs
to float in the sea with the sun on our faces, toes stretched to the sky and all we can hear is our breathing and the waves lapping against our relaxed body
to be more present to connections with family and friends
to read books more, social media less
to pace ourselves into a more relaxed state of being…and be okay with it
to eat the gelato and sip the aperol spritzes, and savor the arrosticini and drink the cerasuolo, and eat copious amounts of seafood in all its forms (fried, si per favore) and take in all the pecorino wine
to have a proper lunch and nap afterwards…wherever you happen to be
to watch the clouds pass and the stars fill the night sky
to wake up naturally to birds and neighbors chatting, not shrilling alarms
to disconnect with things that don’t matter and reconnect with ourselves - inside and out
to leave the past behind and revel in the present moment
Is it no wonder that Ferragosto holiday is the most important holiday in Italy? If it is one thing Italians do best, it is living la dolce vita and ferie is the culmination of living ‘the sweet life’. When it comes to holidays, ‘Italians do it better’, there is no doubt.
We are grateful for this ‘ferie’ and all it has taught us. So very different from frantic, ‘must see, must do, must race to do it all’ summer vacations packed into a week in our California life. So different, it took us 7 years to deeply understand and experience a holiday as it should be…the dolce vita way. We definitely did holiday ‘better’ this year and will forever welcome August.
Buona vacanze!
While we don’t recommend coming to Italy in August, we are happy to craft a calm, hassle-free, live-like-a-local Italy vacation any other month of the year. Visit us at The Conciergist for more info.
