WHEN IN ITALY...

On a trip to Italy, AATISH NATH lives la dolce vita at two famous Belmond properties that dish out equal amounts of history, luxury, and destination flavours.

- AATISH NATH

TRAVEL OFTEN FEELS like a dream— surreal, exciting, demanding, and unfamiliar. Consequently, it can take some time to truly give in and comprehend that your life, momentarily, has taken on the rhythms of its new surroundings. In Italy, where a trip is about living la dolce vita, it feels like you’re not on a holiday so much as on the set of an elaborate movie, where men are dressed in suits, the colours are saturated in the afternoon sun, and everything from the architecture to the food is waiting for its close-up shot. It’s only when you wake up and step out onto the balcony that the reality of it hits: the Italian sun blazing down on you, Mount Etna smoking in the distance, and all around, a garden blooming. In my case, I walked out with a cup of coffee in hand, made not in the house of a gregarious grandmother but in my hotel room.

The hotel in question was the Grand Hotel Timeo, A Belmond Hotel in Taormina. It’s the kind of property that guarantees the feels. Having started out as a private home, it has played host to everyone from Guy de Maupassant to D H Lawrence to Truman Capote. It abuts the ancient Greek theatre in Taormina on the east coast of Sicily, but its main draw has always been the views it offers over the coastline.