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I could write a book about beaches. I grew up on one – Daytona Beach – a place most Americans associate with NASCAR, but which the town fathers had a different plan for, somewhat immodestly and perhaps a bit even more hyperbolically bestowing upon it the name “the World’s Most Famous Beach.” So seriously they took this absurdity that one of the radio stations my father worked at before my birth had the call letters WMFJ, which the owner settled on because WMFB was not available.

From the time I was six my parents started travelling to and vacationing in the Cayman Islands, now considered “the World’s Most Famous Place to Launder Your Money” but back in the 1960s was the purest, most unspoiled Eden imaginable. It was certainly unspoiled by regular electrical service and growing up I recall eating dinners in the cool ocean breeze lit by kerosene hurricane lamps which not only cast a warm glow over our table but also attracted several million hungry mosquitos that performed the useful task of transfusing blood among the islanders and in the process succeeding in strengthening our collective immune systems.

When I reached teenagerhoodship my parents had not exactly tired of Daytona and Cayman, but wanted to set sail for new horizons. So on two occasions they chartered a captained sailboat, a 55 foot vessel that served as a floating psychology experiment with the goal of studying whether three adolescent boys and their parents could survive in an enclosed space equal to about two telephone booths surrounded by nothing by open seas. Perhaps the goal was to see if someone would eventually be willing to risk life and limb to swim ashore, and if so, who it would be. In the end, though, we got along famously, almost, and our two voyages aboard the Nymph Errant II, one around the Bahamas and the other around the Turks and Caicos Islands cemented our love of the island life and the beach life, a love that has continued to thrive and grow to this day.

So given this affinity for all things aquatic, it is not difficult to understand why we have often built our Italian itineraries to include some beach time. And it may explain why, after having just spent three weeks in the Caribbean in May (two weeks in the Caymans and our weeklong return to the Turks and Caicos, for the first time in 40 years) our first destination on our monthlong summer trip to Italy would be the island of Ischia.

Although we have only visited Ischia twice, I am comfortable opining that Ischia has it all. Beaches, clear water for swimming, snorkeling and diving, boating and thermal spas. We have written about our daily activities there at some length on our blog, which you are welcome to peruse. Particularly memorable, however, was our day chartering a captained sailboat for a circuit around the island. Perhaps it is a case of the son becoming the father, that I was seeking an experience like the Nypmh Errant to close the circle of life. But it was definitely more than that. The sense of peace and tranquility that comes from cutting through the seas, silently, not creating power but, as our capitano Andrea noted, understanding and harnessing the power that exists in nature. It is the same sense of harmony I feel when I take out my little racing sailboat, the zippy little Laser in the Caymans and the hull starts to hum in the water.

But not all of our beach memories have to do with the water or the sand or the sun. Sometimes they come from the people who were shaped by the tradewinds, whose unhurried pace is a concession to the heat, who most often are happy to harness the power that nature provides them rather than seeking to dominate it. That character was clearly on display years ago when Suzy and I were shopping in one of Cayman’s “super”markets. Back in the day, all provisions arrived on the island by ship once a week or so. Variety was limited and quantities scarce and compromises were necessary, such as freezing the cartons of milk to keep them from spoiling on their journey. In this environment it is perhaps not surprising when, not being able to find a box of Nestles Quick to flavor our children’s milk we were met with the response to our query about where to find the Quick with, “no mon. We couldn’t keep it on the shelves, mon, so we stopped carrying it, mon.”

That nonchalance, that easy comfort with life and the ability to not stress too much about nearly anything contributes to making island life so relaxing. And it often manifests itself in a warmth between people that you don’t nearly as often witness in more landlocked locales. Just recently at a dinner on Ischia we stumbled upon a simple restaurant in town. Some might call it a shack. But what it lacked in décor and other superficial outward manifestations of value (table cloths, artwork on the walls, waiters in uniforms) it more than made up for in comfort. Comfort food, comforting service, comfortable atmosphere, all this despite the painfully obvious fact that Suzy and I were strangers in a strange land (witness my pink trousers and Suzy’s beach dress, both more suited for Miami Beach than Ischia). But aside from the food, what we witnessed there, among a group of twenty or so diners assembled for some important occasion (birthday, anniversary) along three enormous tables arranged in a U shape, was truly heartwarming. For nearly two hours a Neapolitan man played guitar, sang and truly entertained the group, our neighboring tables, us and throngs of people crowding along the edge of the restaurant, looking in, singing along, carrying on a conversation with the “maestro.” It was difficult to follow his rat-a-tat-tat Neapolitan dialect but there were more than a few spicy words thrown in as he sang ballads, told racy jokes and made everyone happy. At one point he sang a song to a little girl at the table next to us and when we sat down with him for a drink after dinner and I remarked how remarkable the connection between him and the little girl seemed, he acknowledged it and told us that he, who had held fifty diners and passersby in the palm of his hand for nearly two hours, was physically afraid when he sang to her, afraid that he wouldn’t be good enough or that he might start to cry. It had been obvious that this particular song had been more than simply a performance for him. He was harnessing something that existed naturally in the room and naturally between the people there. He was sailing.

Coastlines are often things of breathtaking beauty. There is something so natural and so elemental about a landscape that in the sweep of the eye transforms from dry, rocky cliff to gentle, scrubby ground, to pebbly lightness, to fine white sand to cool blue waters. The unfurling of colors sooths the eye and when those sights are combined with other pleasing sounds and smells or other sights such as dozens of thrillseekers kitesurfing, the effect can be memorable. Such was the case when we took a detour to a private nature reserve on Sardinia. We pulled into a barren parking lot with a sign indicating that a natural beach lay across the boardwalk that had been built over the wetlands. As we wandered through (or above) the scrub, great dunes stretched ahead of us and over the tops of the dunes we could see dozens of colorful kites and when we emerged onto the beach we only then discovered that surfers streaking through the water were commanding the motions of the kites above. It was a beautiful image, one not easily forgotten.

Another wonderful Sardinian memory was a day spent (you guessed it) on a day sail. But unlike our private Ischia sail, this one was shared with about twenty or so others aboard a vintage wooden sailboat looking like it was designed as a pirate ship, with a giant center deck and plenty of area for the large group to lay out in the sun and expose most of their most intimate body parts to the sun and to Suzy and me. It was a unique experience being part of a mostly Italian tour group, observing the interactions within the various groups and between them as well. As the only Americans aboard we were not exactly embraced or shunned, until a potential tragedy struck that brought our entire group together. One young boy who had been snorkeling had lost his mask in the water and, like a good Italian boy, had neglected or avoided telling his parents of his loss. When his father discovered this fact it appeared that the little boy would suffer Italian justice, a few uncomfortably hard (for us onlookers) slaps or spanks from the father. When this transpired I was in the water with my own mask and spied the boy’s mask on the bottom, in rather deep water. I fancy myself as a pretty good diver, however, and yelled to the crowd on the boat that I would recover the boy’s mask for him. Given the depth and the fact that I was not wearing fins, there was a general sense among the crowd that I could not make it to the bottom. I even overheard the young German couple say to one another, “when the old man doesn’t make it, I’ll do it.” Spurred by his insult (which happens to be true) I took a deep breath and swam like hell, only to give up about 10 feet above the bottom and the boy’s mask. I surfaced, gasping for air but resolved to try again. With images of the blond German surfer dude besting me in my mind, I kicked like the wind, made my way to the bottom where I plucked the mask from the sand and shot up to the surface, holding the mask above my head like Mufassa holding Simba in the air at Pride Rock, for all to see. I was expecting chants of USA-USA-USA, which never did seem to materialize, but there were many more smiles around at lunch and an occasional conversation that probably wouldn’t have occurred had the boy not lost his mask.

Cesenatico is a little seaside town in Emilia-Romagna that we have visited a couple of times in order to enjoy fried seafood at a restaurant recommended to us by our friend Andrea. And although the trip to Cesenatico is worth it just to visit the Osteria del Gran Fritto, our visit to the beach there was just as memorable. Our hotel for our short stay in this Adriatic seaside resort was just across a canal from the Osteria, the canals themselves a thing of beauty with old sailing ships displaying colorful sails lining them. But between meals (lunch at the Osteria del Gran Fritto and dinner at its sister restaurant La Buca) we had some time to kill and decided to borrow a couple of bikes from the hotel and ride down to the beach and take some sun. When we arrived along the beach we discovered literally a billion people crowded onto the several beaches that were each privately entered and run by or in conjunction with individual restaurant/bars. As is nearly always the case with our Italian adventures, we had no idea of how to get on the beach, whether or where to pay an admission, what to wear. The list goes on.

We picked a beach (the one with the best looking bar) and stood around watching bathers come and go, noticing that there was indeed a kiosk where you were expected to pay for something. After a while we worked up the courage to request entrance and were told that the only available beach chairs were in a small, crowded area hundreds of yards away from the water. It looked like an isolation ward for bathers in uncool bathing suits (like mine, that resembled shorts rather than the standard blush inducing tell all brief that we refer to in my family as “banana hammocks”), a fact made even more maddening by the fact that many of the prime chairs at water’s edge were empty. We paid our admission, thanked the attendant and wandered down the boardwalk toward the sea and quickly veered off, depositing our towels, books, iPad, shoes, sunscreen – more like the whole nine pounds than yards – on a strategically placed

set of chairs in the cool section. There there was much joy and happiness, as well as exposed skin and toplessness. I was beginning to get the idea that Italian medical students could spend time here to become conversant in anatomy. Not five minutes after unpacking, snapping a few photos and generally settling in for the day (until dinner), our ticket attendant, who had clearly and in English told us that we were prohibited from sitting anywhere other than the coastal ICU section, came to move us out of the one percenters’ neighborhood. When I stammered that I thought he meant we couldn’t sit in this area because there was no space available, which clearly wasn’t the case, he replied that people rent particular chairs for the entire season and that their property is not to be violated. We sheepishly moved back to the cheap seats at least enjoying the sun for the rest of the afternoon with our sartorially challenged neighbors.

But by far, one of our favorite beaches, one of our favorite islands is Ponza. An hour’s hydrofoil ride from Anzio, south of Rome, Ponza is a bare bones, no frills island. It is little more than a big lump of rock rising from the Mediterranean, whose soul purpose is to collect sun and fish for the locals and the handful of tourists that visit each summer. We have been going there for the past six years since first reading about it in Vanity Fair and imagining ourselves buzzing along its windy cliff road on Vespa, an image that has been transformed into reality over and over and over again.

The first time I actually stepped foot on a beach in Ponza was also the first time I fulfilled my Ponza Vespa dream. Leaving Suzy behind in our hotel I took the rental Vespa for a ride across the entire island, a journey which takes about 30 minutes. From the mountainous vantage point I could see numerous rocky beaches below, their colorful umbrellas and beach chairs clustered on whatever water ringed real estate was available. Spying one such beach from above, I parked the Vespa and surveyed the steep mountain for signs of a path down to the beach. I made several false starts through the bush before finding some brightly handpainted signs announcing “this way to La Caletta.” Painted on these little freehand signs, which were made from driftwood, were images of the sun and the water, and every now and then a little sign with a Burma Shave type message, generally having to do with being kind to your neighbor beckoned me forward. After ten minutes or so I had made my way down to sea level to discover the most beautiful beach, not covered in fine white sand, but simply spewing from the land and spilling into the water in rough, spiky volcanic stone. This was definitely a beach for wearing water shoes. But spread out across the rocky beach on every flat spot available were colorful beach chairs and umbrellas arranged in groups of two to six, with people enjoying the height of tranquility and relaxation. A few feet away, a couple was nearing waters’ edge, gingerly picking spots to step that wouldn’t injure their feet while in the water couples floated and children boated. And that water. With the bright sun reflecting off of it in shimmering patches it was more than crystal clear, it was positively transparent, save for the light bluish tint it gave off. And when I returned to La Caletta the next day with Suzy, to do more than just reconnaissance of this perfect beach, I learned just how ideal that water was. Plunging into it for the first time, being enveloped in its shockingly refreshing crispness was like entering a state of nirvana. We have been back to La Caletta and to Ponza many times since and every time I enter its perfect waters the result is the same.

My parents left many gifts with me throughout their lives. But one of the greatest gifts they gave was an opportunity to love and appreciate the simplicity and near perfection of the beach and the easy comfort with life that so defines the islands.