I have to admit, Italy has been on my mind lately. Not because I have another trip planned to Italy, although if Lufthansa Airlines would like to sponsor this blog post, I am certainly open to discussing the opportunity. I have absolutely no brand loyalty when it comes to complimentary business class seats.

No, Italy has been on my mind because apparently every person I have ever admired has collectively packed their linen wardrobe, purchased an oversized straw hat that absolutely would not fit in the overhead compartment, and migrated to Italy for the summer. Every single morning I open Instagram and before I have had enough coffee to become a reasonable member of society, another actress, influencer, or CEO is stepping off a polished wooden boat in Lake Como, eating pasta that somehow appears to contain nothing but joy and carbohydrates without consequences, and staring thoughtfully across the Mediterranean as though monthly board meetings are best conducted with a Hugo Spritz in one hand and a cashmere sweater casually draped over her shoulders in eighty-degree weather. Which, I have decided, is the international signal that someone either has generational wealth or knows a really good photographer.

At first, I was simply enjoying the pictures because, let’s be honest, Italy is beautiful. This isn’t exactly investigative journalism. David and I traveled there in 2022, and I still think about that trip more often than I probably should. Florence made me question why I had spent thirty-three years believing pasta came from a cardboard box, and somewhere between watching an Italian grandmother effortlessly make fresh pasta by hand and eating what I can only describe as the best bowl of cacio e pepe of my life, I became convinced that olive oil deserved to be treated with more respect than Americans treat bourbon. It was one of my favorite trips we have ever taken, so naturally I understand the obsession. But after what felt like the forty-seventh impossibly chic Italian vacation post in three days, I started laughing because something wasn’t adding up.

The people filling my Instagram feed weren’t escaping winter in Minnesota. They weren’t finally taking the once-in-a-lifetime European vacation they had spent years saving for. Most of them live exactly where I do… Southern California. Which, unless something catastrophic has happened while I have been writing this, is already one of the most desirable places on earth to spend July. We have beaches that people fly across oceans to visit, vineyards within driving distance, mountains close enough for a weekend getaway, weather that is honestly a little smug because Southern California knows exactly how attractive it is and refuses to apologize for it, and sunsets that make people from the East Coast briefly consider uprooting their entire lives. So I found myself asking a question that completely caught me off guard. If all of these people already live somewhere everyone else dreams about visiting… why is everyone suddenly in Italy?

Now before anyone starts typing, “Kalie, just let people enjoy things,” let me stop you right there because that isn’t where this is going. I adore beautiful photographs. I probably always will. I am incredibly proud of other women’s accomplishment and go out of my way to celebrate their stories. I also very much enjoy a video that is beautifuly curated and completely understands first hand the work that does into those productions. But I do have to admit all that beauty has a funny way of slowing us down just enough to remind us that the world is still worth paying attention to. If anything, I think we need more beauty, not less. The problem wasn’t the photographs or videos. The problem was that I realized I had stopped being obsessively curious about them. I was just taking them as face value look at them living this beautiful life.

That realization arrived because of one of my favorite book influencers. She spends almost every day convincing me to buy another novel that I absolutely do not have shelf space for, and I trust her recommendations enough that my credit card starts feeling nervous every time she posts. Then suddenly she was in Paris. A few days later she was in Italy. Then she was recommending sunscreen. Then luggage. Then a luxury hotel. Then she was holding a handbag that probably cost more than my first car, my second car, and if we’re being completely honest, maybe my nursing school tuition. I remember smiling because it finally clicked.

She wasn’t on vacation.

She was at work.

Not in the miserable, fluorescent-lighting, reheated-leftovers sort of way most of us picture work. She was working somewhere with significantly better architecture and substantially better pasta than the average office park.

And for some reason, that realization made me admire her even more.

That tiny realization completely changed the way I looked at every photograph after that. Instead of wishing I were also posing on the boat, I became fascinated by everything I couldn’t see. I went back to wondering who had invited her, whether the hotel was hosting the stay, if the local tourism board had organized the itinerary, whether there was a photographer standing just outside the frame trying to convince everyone to “laugh naturally,” and how many contracts had been negotiated months before anyone ever zipped up a suitcase. I even caught myself wondering how many emails had been answered before breakfast while the rest of us were standing in Trader Joe’s debating whether burrata counted as a necessity or a luxury because, honestly, it was only $4.99 and that practically feels like saving money.

The funny thing is that asking those questions didn’t make the photographs less magical.

It made them infinitely more interesting.

A few days later I stumbled across a phrase that perfectly described what had happened inside my own brain: visual literacy. I had never heard the term before, which honestly sounds like a failure of both graduate school and my lifelong obsession with reading and learning. Visual literacy is simply the ability to read an image instead of merely looking at it. Historians do it with old photographs. Art historians do it with paintings. They ask who created the image, what story is being told, what was happening just outside the frame, and perhaps most importantly, what story the image quietly leaves out. Looking back, I think I’ve always been wired this way. I’ve never been satisfied with simply admiring someone’s success. I’ve always wanted to know how they built it. What choices did they make? What did they sacrifice? What happened before everyone else started paying attention?

Somewhere along the way, I think social media convinced us to stop doing that. We scroll through reels, TikToks and beautifully curated photographs believing we have somehow witnessed an entire life when, in reality, we’ve only been handed the cover of the book.

Photographs have always been little liars.

Not malicious liars.

Just wonderfully incomplete ones.

A picture of a happy marriage doesn’t show the ordinary Tuesdays when two people chose to just hug each other instead of winning the argument. A photograph of an elegant dinner party doesn’t show someone frantically running back to the grocery store because they forgot butter. A beautifully renovated kitchen doesn’t show the years it took to save for it and the months of delay. Even one of my favorite photographs from this summer, the one inside Godmothers Bookstore, looks delightfully spontaneous as I cheese awkwardly imagining myself standing next to Oprah or Megan. What it doesn’t show is that I drove eight hours in one day because I wanted to visit a bookstore, spent most of Highway 101 talking to myself like a retired English professor, and somehow managed to leave with a candle and a T-shirt instead of a single book. Honestly, if there were ever a photograph that accurately summarized my personality, it might be that one.

The photograph wasn’t fake.

It simply wasn’t the whole story.

And maybe that’s what I’ve been thinking about ever since Italy started taking over my Instagram feed. The older I get, the less interested I become in the photograph itself and the more fascinated I become by everything that happened before someone reached for the camera. I still want another bowl of cacio e pepe in Rome, another afternoon wandering through Florence, and another excuse to pretend I understand Italian wine well enough to nod thoughtfully before taking a sip. But I also hope I never lose the habit of asking what happened outside the frame.

Because I’ve started to believe that the invisible part of the picture is almost always the most interesting part.

So no, I won’t be in Italy this summer. At least not physically. Instead, I did what I tend to do best whenever I can’t stop thinking about a place, I researched it, read a book set in Italy, poured myself a drink, and let my imagination do the traveling. There is something wonderfully comforting about recreating just a tiny piece of another culture in your own kitchen, so we’ve been eating an unreasonable amount of pasta around here and experimenting with Italian-inspired cocktails. It reminds me that sometimes the point isn’t recreating the entire vacation. Sometimes it’s simply slowing down long enough to appreciate where the inspiration came from.

I will leave you with this, in my research (eating at fancy Italian reseurents in Orange County, don’t tell David) I kept seeing this new drink called the Hugo Spritz so your girl went and did a little research and came up with her own version that I wanted to share with you. The Hugo Spritz cocktail is ironically, it’s a fairly new cocktail by Italian standards. The Hugo Spritz was created in 2005 by bartender Roland Gruber in the small mountain town of Naturno in Italy’s South Tyrol region. He wanted something lighter, brighter, and a little more floral than the classic Aperol Spritz, and after one sip I completely understood why it has become a summer favorite throughout northern Italy.

So while everyone else on Instagram appears to be sipping theirs somewhere overlooking Lake Como, I’ll happily be drinking mine in Southern California. The weather is beautiful here too, the sunsets are still free, and my backyard has one very important advantage over Italy.

Hugo Spritz

Ingredients

• 2 oz Elderflower Liqueur (I found mine at Trader Joe’s, although St-Germain is the classic choice.)
• 3 oz Soda Water
• 4 oz Extra Dry Prosecco
• 2–3 Fresh Mint Leaves
• Lime Wedge, for garnish
• Mint Sprig, for garnish

Directions

Lightly muddle the mint leaves with the elderflower liqueur directly in your wine glass, just enough to release their fragrance. Fill the glass generously with ice, then pour in the chilled prosecco followed by the soda water. Give everything one gentle stir—you don’t want to lose those beautiful bubbles—and finish with a fresh mint sprig and a wedge of lime.

Then do yourself one favor.

Before you reach for your phone to take the picture…

Take a sip first.

The story is always better when you experience it before you document it.

Cin cin, friends.

Now it’s time for a nap in the sun.

Always Have, Always Will ~ Kalie