“Hey!”
“Hey, how are you? What’s happening?” came the reply on the other end of the line.
“Good, great, Are you on your terrace?”
“Yes, I am… I know it looks like the exact same colour, doesn’t it?” asked my best friend.
“It’s scary we remembered the same evening today… just saying,” I smiled into the phone
“That evening… how can we ever forget?”
“I’ve never seen those colors, coral and magenta…” I reminisced.
“How could we forget? You almost fell from our tender (a smaller boat used for ferrying to and from the yacht to the shore) ride into ‘Cala di Volpe’ getting the perfect shot.” teased my friend.
“What are you complaining about? You still have that picture on your bedside table.”
Oh, what a day that was, what a trip actually! We’d been on a super yacht all around the Italian Riviera for a week by then. Our perfect gang of twelve. We’d danced and partied in Capri, enjoyed the sunset from hotel ‘Caesar Augustus’, dined at the lemony ‘Paulinho’. We had enjoyed local gelato and pizza in Amalfi. Clicked a thousand pictures, jet skied and sea-bobbed in the gorgeous waters off Positano… and wait…we also slid down the massive slide attached for us from the third floor of our yacht into the turquoise blue water of the Tyrrhenian sea. Post which we enjoyed a leisurely lunch at ‘Il San Peitro di Positano’ where we couldn’t choose whether we wanted to gorge on the scrumptious meal or on the view of the emerald expanse below us.
We spent lazy mornings at breakfast fit for kings, talking our hearts out on board and then eating our hearts out on the streets of Ponza (a tiny island vacationed on by Beyoncé and Jay Z and Rihanna to name a few) where we ate the best brick oven pizza ever. We enjoyed laid back boat rides over almost crystalline still waters into post card Italian towns. We strolled through Portofino and ate short pasta in Santa Margarita. One afternoon our captain arranged for us to swim below an arch jutting off the rugged Italian shore. This was an unreal experience. Music blaring from our smaller boats, we just jumped off them into the greenest blue water which was as clear as the Kohinoor. We could actually see the sea-bed below our dancing feet with the sunlight piercing the ocean. We were in our own slice of heaven!
However the highlight of our trip was Puerto Cuervo in Costa Smeralda, Sardinia. It was the last destination we anchored in. We had a royal picnic on the fine sand beaches and dipped into the crisp blue water. We jumped from our deck into the ocean. We dined at ‘Cipriani’, danced at the ‘Billionare’ club, shopped at the boutiques.
The best however was saved for the last evening. As we stepped out onto the deck, dressed to the T for an enjoyable evening on land, we were awestruck by the view we beheld. We sat mesmerized on our tender rides into ‘Cala di Volpe’. I swear the sky was the same color as the watermelons we had devoured just hours ago. It was a palette of colors so vibrant that they seemed to be stroked by the brush of an artist. An artist who favoured rose-madder and mauve and lilac and coral, an artist who loved these happy colours, an artist who presented this beautiful display to us as a farewell gift. And we couldn’t get enough of it. We just wanted to etch this beautiful evening into our memories forever.
“The picture on my bed side is my favorite moment captured from that trip,” she confided.
“Also on top of my list was the ‘guard of honouresque’ welcome that the crew gave us in Naples.”
“I would very much like to forget that particular morning though, our last one there.”
“Come on let’s not go there,” I begged.
“It was so reckless of you!”
“I know, I know and I’m sorry even now.”
“I was watching you from the upper deck, repeatedly shouting and zooming passed us on your jet ski,” she chided.
“It was so much fun, speeding there almost felt meditative…until we hit the huge swell- ”
“Mom! you fell in the middle of the ocean speeding?” my youngest surprised (sneaking up on) me from the couch behind.
“You failed to mention that on your return,” added my older one.
“Was Dad the one you took down with you?!!” chimed in my middle one, not one to shirk from policing me.
“Oops! Busted! I’ll call you tomorrow.”
