Wow, Hotel People. You’ve blown me away with your appreciation on The Italian Hotel Matchmaker. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’m so thrilled you’re as excited about it as me! V2 is coming soon. Also, Monday may be my new posting day after all – it works a bit better for me.

Today is writing-heavy. In a good way, I hope. I only do this once in a while, so when I do I try to make sure it’s solid.

Happy Hoteling!

Marissa

For Consideration

• La Double J just opened a store in Capri! What a match, I’m thrilled. I’m interested to see if they fall into the Caprification of products (exclusive to Capri) like the big houses of luxury do. It may surprise you to know that I actually love these sorts of things – I’m a collector by identity, as are many Capri-every-yearers. Also in store news, Vibi Venezia has a store in Venice (I’ve been hoping for this!) and coolest of all, Marni has collaborated with Pasticceria Cucchi in Milan for a Marnified experience through July 15th.

  

• The new EU rules of the EES entry system are officially live as of April 10th. I somehow lucked out that I entered on my visa in Rome before this was official, but somehow I got the sticker on my passport (I had been wondering what it meant) and now I understand why they were so excited for me. This article from The Points Guy explains it well. So far, I haven’t heard of extra-long lines, but “the season” hasn’t really started.

• This incredible day in the life of a place that I’m lucky to consider a locale by Italy Segreta. Lovely!

• In Florence, here’s the TLDR on current buzz from my brain’s view – they’ve spent so long fortifying the wall of the Arno which made walking along the lungarno unfun the whole time, and now they’re done, but the inside of the wall is painted white, which sticks out like a sore thumb. Everyone I’ve spoken to about it has the same refrain – bruttissimo. At least art in this city right now is fan-f*cking-tastic. Yes, Rothko at Palazzo Strozzi, but I’m also really excited for the new Art Deco exhibit at Palazzo Medici Riccardi. It’s been warm enough for an American to want AC and ice, which has been awfully nice. I cannot wait for the vintage show/fair at Palazzo Corsini the 17th-19th.

For Consumption

• I have an old dress that looks EXACTLY like this, and last summer I got a DM from someone asking where it was from and for some reason I looked them up on LinkedIn. I think this dress could have been inspired by my old one.

• I’ve been on a jewelry hunt for statement summer pieces. I have too many contenders, but black pearls, a red nautilus, and a tortoise shell (literally) are in the lead.

• Perfect striped jeans! I have a few pairs of past years’ varietals – true to size. But also baby pink is really on my mind.

• Unsurprisingly, I want all the La Vest new arrivals, specifically this candy-colored tunic, these sequined shorts, and the new baby blue varietal of old faithful.

For Today

• An Italian 101 summer travel one-pager.

• An essay on joy and color, with a poll at the end.

• Can I take you to Sunset? Bringing you to my favorite place in the US, and how to get there.

Italian 101: The Essential Summer Travel Toolkit

For the travel agents! And/or whomever this is useful for. A one-pager of Italian that I really recommend every English-speaker (American, especially) practice before coming to Italy in 2026. I kept it to the most basic, and vocab that I overhear often and step in to translate.

Joy & Color for Resistance & Community

I know I’m not the only one that’s…struggling…with the state of the world and continually finding ways to stay sane, while helping how you can.

I keep coming back to the topic of joy as an act of resistance. Is it? Even for me, a naturally thin white woman who won the 2026 lottery of getting an Italian Digital Nomad Visa by writing about hotels on Substack?

But then the counter-argument, also on repeat in my inner monologue. It can’t be productive to just feel so much anger and sadness and desperation for the world at all times, can it?

While I noodled on it, I made the password for The Italian Hotel Matchmaker something that nodded to it.

In my research, I found this NPR podcast from last July, Is Joy a Form of Resistence?, where they discuss exactly this, and so thoroughly, with so much nuance I don’t have. I started listening admittedly in the hopes of being met with the answer I wanted – yes, joy is an acceptable form of resistance, even for you, white woman.

I listened to the whole thing. And then I read the transcript of it – listening and reading process in my brain differently and I wanted my subconscious to pick up on all the nuance, all the important tension.

Then it was time to go run my morning errands, which naturally prompted a quick Instagram scroll. I came across a reel of this woman, Kayleigh, who was singing along to Vanessa Carlton in her car, with the text “My therapist told me about the ‘nostalgic reset’ and it’s completely changed the way I manage anxiety.” I typed in the prompt to get her playlist, which I have only done a couple times before – it was completely in the same vein of my own playlist I started last May, pre-Sicily trip, called “Dopamine Summer.” I had also made it as a way to cope with the anxiety I was feeling at the time – songs that prompted vivid and good memories, riffs ripe with nostalgia and naivety, chords transporting me to times when I felt safe.

I started walking down my street to hit my morning stops, listening to my playlist, when the song Heavy Foot by Mon Rovîa played as I was approaching a supbar establishment, but the light was hitting just right. It’s one of very few current songs on the playlist. I stopped on the corner before crossing the street to the market, where I would be distracted, and really listened to the lyrics. It felt like some sort of sign, the light on the corner, immediately after seeing the post about the nostalgic reset.

The chorus did strike a very resonant chord (pun intended).

Mon Rovîa was born and raised in Monrovia, Liberia until he was adopted by a family in Appalachia when he was seven but he had made such a joyful song about such heavy things.

I thought about the origin of the American-loved Italian classic “Bella Ciao,” a folk song that became an anthem for resistance in fascist WWII Italy. Anyone who’s ever heard the song would think it’s a happy song.

I thought when Jack Schlossberg posted lipsyncing videos to millennial anthems in the critical time leading up to the 2024 election. Most thought he was marring the Kennedy name and wasting time on the campaign trail but I always thought no, he’s trying to capture his peers’ – millennials – attention by grabbing them with musical nostalgia (example 1, example 2, example 3).

Nostalgia is one hell of a drug – especially for my generation. It didn’t work, but when it became Zohran’s big millennial moment of possibility, he took to the clubs, just before election day. I’d be shocked if this video didn’t at least make a dent. The emotion was contagious, and the emotion was joy.

I pulled the NPR transcript back up on my phone and scanned to find the point where they spoke about NOLA.

Share

YES. I thought about Mon Rovîa and Bella Ciao and “nostalgic reset” playlists and the red thread was strong – joy is a powerful coping mechanism to be able to persevere.

That’s key. But I do realize these are all musically-related.

I put my thought break on pause as I realized I forgot to put on sunscreen and was standing in the sun and continued to the market. One person, then two, then three all complimented my outfit. They all said two words in common i colori – the colors. I don’t have a photo, but I was wearing my painted baggy jeans, a true blue button down oversized and underbuttoned, a grass green sweater around my neck, Peeps yellow socks and navy blue friulane.

On theme, I wanted to buy a vintage boy’s red Polo button down but the vendor’s husband was inside eating and he had the credit card machine. I was fine waiting, both because it was an A+ red staple steal and because I was in thought. I stood on the steps leading into the inside part of the Mercato, looking out at the vendors selling everything from beads to fabric to vintage Ferragamo and tomatoes and all the green everything. Fantastic background for thinking.

I recalled all the other times Florentines, a typically insular population, had stopped me to comment on all the colors I was wearing. I’m still very much working on the finding actual friends in the city where I live thing, but I have always felt a true sense of community in this city. Could it be the color? Is that why people remember me and feel both comfortable and compelled to talk to me and even compliment me?

I had considered before that it was a main factor in contributing to my sense of community, but after listening to and reading the NPR podcast I wondered if color was also a way of me contributing back to my community.

The podcast had referenced a potent line by Audre Lorde – “The sharing of of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers.”

I had already locked in on the importance of joy in perseverance, but this new meaning felt meaningful – the sharing of joy as a bridge between the sharers.

Each of us, we are a sharer. We are participants of planet Earth, of this great human experiment. We all have our communities – whatever yours is, it’s worth asking yourself what’s unique and authentically you that you can share.

I want to share my love of color – a random handful of references that have long lived vibrantly in my mind. I collect colorful images like I collect hotels.

First, we’ll start with style – visuals that made a big impression, images that have gone on to have a ripple effect into my community.

Marc Jacobs got fired from Perry Ellis for that collection, but this is the only look that ever really resonated with me. The 90s I’m inspired by is neither gaunt nor grey.

I also love proving you can be polished and bright.

Yes, Steve Jobs wore a black uniform, but he chose his logo to be a rainbow apple.

I was so confused when Alix Earle said that Reale Actives was filling white space in the skincare world by being a colorful brand. When I think of color, powerful color, I don’t think of subtle hues. I like how they did it in the 60s.

I like a lot of what they did in the 60s and how they did it.

E-comm editorialization has become so of-the-moment – a “color story” gets a photoshoot and homepage real estate if it’s timely. But, what about the fact that color can BE the story? Always! Merchandizing can influence a color craving. Missed opportunities with much higher emotional stakes missed, left and right!

The Rothko exhibit at Palazzo Strozzi is resonating so deeply for a reason, and I’m tempted to think that it has something big to do with color and its symbolism in the current state of the world. I’m going this week, line be damned.

What’s your unique form of joy? Do others find your smile contagious? Do you love to host? Are you great at reading children’s books in voices? Everyone has something, and I’d love to invite you to share.

I have been working on another project that revolves around color for quite some time. That’s not ready, but this whole joy as resistance thing felt apt to share and gauge the temperature for “color” becoming a larger pillar within the Happy Hoteling world. Yes with hotels, but not exclusively.

My Favorite Place in The US

I want to take you somewhere really special to me. I’ve written about it before, but only briefly because it’s somewhere sacred for generations of people that went to my high school, and I’m sure for the native peoples their entire existence.

Every time I see it pop up on my TikTok FYP, the comment section is flooded with where is this or but where exactly and questions like do you have to pay?

Obviously, I gloat in hometown pride every time, but I’ve also yet to see someone actually, properly describe how to get there, or fully capture what it’s like.

I’ll share the secret specifics below, but the place at hand is towards the top of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California.

Mount Tamalpais = Mt. Tam = the mountain I grew up on that shaped me.

I debated far too much on whether I should tell you the specifics. I really don’t want my friends or peers or current Tam students to be upset, or for people to ruin it.

But on my last night in California, I took my mom’s car up to Sunset. I hadn’t been since 2020 when we still had my childhood home on Mt. Tam and when I was living with my dad for lockdown.

It was an abnormally warm day for March, so I headed up the mountain far before the sun would actually set to get a proper feel for how popular it has gotten in the TikTok era.

As you wind up and up, there’s finally the turn that’s a pretty sure-fire way to want to move to The Bay.

It’s a sharp one – there are two lanes and both narrow, which makes it seem like you’re floating above the Pacific, with great, green hills arriving as your friends. I have done this drive hundreds (not hyperbole) of times, but unless it was completely entrenched in fog, I have never once not felt real, true awe.

That’s why I did decide to share – awe is such a powerfully good emotion. It’s my drug of choice and I can’t live with the thought of potential readers who live in The Bay and have never properly been to Sunset. And we aren’t even there yet!

It’s similar to driving over the famous Bixby Bridge in Big Sur, but without traffic and with slightly more cell service.

I first parked far before real Sunset, right after the big turn, at a main parking lot for hikes on Mt. Tam. This was never our stomping ground – it’s where people come from near and far to hike, and for great reason but at least with me in company, we were never there for that. Regardless, I wanted to get to the start of the trail to see the vantage point of the city (there’s another to the right instead of left, but I prefer seeing the open Pacific partnered with it). And I wanted to take a photo of the turn for you all.

It was the greenest green. The sea appeared silklike far below, the water changing color based on whether the sun was partially blocked by the mountain. In fantastic fodder for my favorite artist Seurat, there was one person sitting on their stomach on the top of a hill reading a book. Art!

A woman younger than me approached, about to try to pass, and I suppose I looked like I might know my way around. Was it because I was wearing loafers not sneakers?

She first asked me if she had to pay, and I was shocked and relieved to tell her, no!

No, this is just where we would come multiple times a week, droves of cars with teenagers, where we consumed our greens and learned how to trip and fell in and out of love and made friendships that still haven’t been broken while genuinely appreciating the beauty of the place even though we were young.

I realized my immense privilege, not just to grow up on that mountain and in that town and with those people, but to have seen so much natural beauty in my life. People propose in front of a once-in-a-lifetime boat trip through the Faraglioni in Capri. People spend $20 on a spritz in front of the Duomo because it’s so incredible and they may not be back. And this kind young woman was under the assumption you would have to pay to see something this beautiful. I’m extremely geographically privileged in terms of where I have true ties.

I told her exactly how to get to real sunset, and to my friend group’s favorite hill – I couldn’t imagine her coming this far and not knowing the fullest extent of how good it gets (this is also how I feel about staying in Marina Grande or Anacapri vs Capri Central, fyi).

Before we continue up the mountain, I’ll share how to get to the turn.