The Amalfi Coast, Dressed in White

Sep 20

6 min read

Inside Casa Angelina, where lemons hang overhead, the sea fills every window, and quiet luxury feels almost like an art form

Have you ever walked into a place and recognized yourself in it?

When I arrived at Casa Angelina, someone handed me a glass of champagne before I had even seen my room. My suitcase disappeared somewhere behind me—I barely noticed.

I walked straight toward the balcony, the doors slid open, and there it was—the Amalfi Coast stretching endlessly in front of me, Positano shimmering in the distance, tiny boats drifting across water so blue it almost didn’t look real.

I took a sip from my glass and just stood there for a moment without saying a word.

Three weeks earlier, I hadn’t even known I was coming to Italy. And somehow, here I was, standing before a view I’d seen hundreds of times in photographs, only to realize none of them had ever captured what it actually felt like.

Then I turned around.

Behind me, white.

White walls, white orchids, white everything. Soft baby blue blended into every detail—the exact shade that has followed me for years. Floor-to-ceiling windows letting the sea become part of the room. Books carefully stacked on tables and shelves. Nothing felt accidental.

And for reasons I couldn’t explain, it felt less like arriving somewhere new and more like walking into a place that had somehow been waiting for me.

I had just enough time to get ready for an early dinner, so I changed into a set I had packed exactly for this day—the kind of outfit that made perfect sense for an April evening on the Amalfi Coast, when the days are warm but the air turns slightly chilly as soon as the sun begins to disappear. I remember standing beneath the lemon trees and noticing how the green I was wearing seemed to fall perfectly into the palette of the place—which, if you know me, is exactly the kind of completely unnecessary detail that can make me very happy.

Before dinner, I found a table on the terrace overlooking the pool and ordered a glass of Fiano. Ordering a grape from Campania while actually sitting in Campania felt almost obligatory, but Fiano also happens to be exactly the kind of white wine I love: fresh and elegant, with citrus, white flowers, and enough texture to make it interesting. There is something about drinking a wine in the place it comes from that changes it for me; maybe the wine doesn’t actually taste different, but the moment does, and I’ve decided that counts.

I sat there for a while with my glass, watching the last of the afternoon light fall over the coast before walking upstairs to Un Piano nel Cielo for dinner. I can’t remember every course I ate that night, or even whether the bubbles in my glass were Champagne or Franciacorta, but I remember the evening itself—the sea outside, the beautiful table, and that delicious feeling of having nowhere else to be.

After dinner, I was shown the wine cellar, and this I remember very clearly. Rows and rows of bottles stretched around me, old vintages tucked into their places, labels I love sitting only inches away. I spotted a Tignanello 2006 and probably looked at it for longer than necessary, although I’ve accepted that I may simply be the kind of woman who gets more excited about an old bottle of wine than a new handbag.

The next morning, I woke up early and opened the balcony doors before doing almost anything else. I made coffee, climbed back into bed with my journal, and spent the morning writing with the Mediterranean in front of me and a beautiful book about lemons lying beside me. It was one of those mornings that looked almost too perfectly Italian to be real, except there I was, barefoot under white sheets, drinking coffee and wondering how quickly a place can begin to feel familiar.

Later, I did yoga before boarding Lady Angelina for a boat ride along the coast, where everything I’d been looking at from my balcony suddenly appeared from the water instead. Positano looked different from down there, stacked almost impossibly into the cliffs, and for a few hours there was nothing to do but look at the coastline, feel the sun on my face, and let Italy be Italy.

That afternoon, I took a painting class on the rooftop. I used to paint when I was younger, so there was something unexpectedly familiar about holding a brush again, especially there, with the Tyrrhenian Sea as my backdrop. I painted slowly, stopping every few minutes to look up at the sea, and I remember thinking how funny it was that I had traveled all the way to the Amalfi Coast only to find myself returning to something I had loved years before.

Painting with the Tyrrhenian Sea as my backdrop.

By the next day, I had stopped feeling any need to do very much at all. I spent hours by the pool with a book, went to the spa, and had an early night, which might not sound particularly exciting on paper, but perhaps that was the point.

Although I should probably mention there was a very cute guy by the pool. Spanish, of course. Tall, dark-haired, with greenish eyes and the kind of smile that made putting my book down considerably easier. He eventually came over to talk to me, and before long we were having a glass of wine and talking about life. I remember wondering what exactly this 35-year-old man was doing by a pool on the Amalfi Coast at noon on a Thursday in the middle of April, apparently with nowhere else he needed to be. As it turned out, he was a business owner, related to the family behind the hotel, and in Italy for a few meetings. His boat was waiting in Naples, and he was leaving early the following day.

We exchanged numbers, and he invited me to dinner later that evening. I already had a massage booked, so nothing particularly dramatic came of it—or at least, that’s what I thought. The next morning, a huge box of chocolates arrived at my room with a handwritten note from him. I don’t even like chocolate, but he didn’t know that. And somehow, that made it sweeter.

Somewhere between the Fiano on the terrace, coffee in bed, a handsome stranger by the pool, painting on the rooftop, and an afternoon spent reading in the sun, Casa Angelina had started to feel less like a hotel I was experiencing and more like a life I recognized.

Looking back, I realized I’d been collecting pieces of that world for years without ever noticing the pattern. White has always been my instinct. Baby blue has followed me everywhere. I fill my home with books, choose outfits and hotels almost as carefully as I’d choose a partner, and can spend an embarrassingly long time deciding between two wine glasses because the shape somehow changes the entire experience.

When I created Ekla, I didn’t know Casa Angelina existed, and when I started Sips & Voyage, I certainly wasn’t trying to recreate a hotel perched above the Mediterranean. I was simply building a world around the things I loved—wine, fashion, travel, beautiful spaces, long dinners, little rituals, and the idea that how we experience something can matter just as much as the thing itself.

And somehow, standing there, those worlds had quietly found each other.

Maybe that is why I’ve never really known how to separate wine, fashion, and travel. To me, they’ve always belonged to the same story. The outfit you pack because you already know exactly where you want to wear it, the local bottle you order simply because you’re curious, the hotel you choose because something about it feels like you before you’ve even arrived. None of these things are particularly important on their own, and yet together they become the tiny details through which I remember my life.

I still think about the champagne I was handed before I ever saw my room. I think about standing on that balcony in complete silence, looking at Positano across the water, and then turning around to find a space that somehow felt as familiar as my own imagination. It wasn’t just a beautiful place to stay. It was one of those rare moments in life when the outside world quietly mirrors something you’ve been building on the inside for years.

Maybe that’s why some places stay with us long after we’ve left them. Not because they showed us somewhere new, but because, for a brief moment, they showed us ourselves.

Sip chic. Dress bold. Travel always.

—N