Eat, Drink, Hike: I Traveled to Italy to Heal My Heartbreak

I traveled to Italy to recover from a breakup and reconnect with my inner Italian.

“Sei sola?” asked the waiter as he led me to an indoor table on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the Testaccio neighborhood of Rome. “Si” I said, “I’m alone.”

“But where is your husband?” he asked with genuine concern. Good question. The waiter was astonished that an American woman was having lunch in a foreign country by herself. But I was traveling solo after the breakup of my multi-year relationship in order to not think about that.

My trip was inspired by a relationship coach I started following on Instagram, Jillian Turecki. I had never met her — in fact, she didn’t know I existed until I interviewed her for this story after I got home. I had simply followed the advice on one of her posts that read, “Go have a solo adventure. Nurture your autonomous self. Go live your life!” So I did: Days after reading those instructions, I conceived, planned, and booked a three-week change of scenery to get over my recent calamity. The cure for any heartache? Italy, of course. I devised my Italian “Eat, Drink, Hike” journey to get me out of my head and back on my feet.

Eating my heart out in Italy

I wanted to remind myself what I love to do, and most of that can be traced back to Italy. Yes, I wanted to feel empowered and “find the road back to my heart,” according to Jillian’s Grit & Grace workbook. But I also wanted to rediscover what gives me pleasure: eating in Italy.

Food tastes better in Italy. The slow food movement was created there in 1986 by Italians demonstrating on the intended site of a McDonald’s at the Spanish Steps in Rome. But farm-to-table is how Italians have always lived; ingredients are King. And on my trip, I wanted to eat like my own Italian grandmother, Elisa, did.

So I rented a car to drive from Rome to Tuscany, where I planned to meet up with two girlfriends. Finding La Bandita Countryhouse in the rolling hills outside of Pienza was my first solo challenge; I made it there with the help of reading glasses, two GPS systems, printed directions, and white knuckles.

At my first dinner at the Countryhouse, chef David served pappardelle with a white ragu of veal and pork, and then petto d’anatra, (duck breast) with potato mille feuille with orange slices and endive. In nearby Bagno Vignoni, lunch was a light Toscano con i Fegatini (chicken liver on toast) and local pecorino e melanzane (cheese and eggplant). It was the perfect antipasto antidote to heartache.

In Bologna, I opted for a “Food Lover’s Tour” with the company Curious Appetite. With their help, I tasted 12-year-old balsamic vinegar at Gilberto and carried mortadella and prosciutto from La Salumeria da Bruno e Franco to Osteria del Sole, a wine bar opened in 1465, where you can bring in your own lunch. Later, I watched a dozen women roll out pasta dough till it was translucent, and craft tortellini by hand. That night, I ate tortellini in brodo (broth) at Trattoria da Gianni with my amica Elizabeth. At Castello Tricierchi, I learned how to make the local “pici” and ravioli with spinach and ricotta, overlooking the hills of Montalcino.

In Rome, my friend Maria took me to her neighborhood salumeria Roscioli, where we devoured a side of pig (mortadella, prosciutto, salame Rosa) followed by the best pasta I’ve had in my life: rigatoni cacio e pepe with guanciale, aka pig cheek. Eating alone the next night in Trastevere, I found Enoteca L’Antidoto, where guest chefs make small plates like puntarelle with salsa verde and salted Sicilian anchovies; shredded chicken with rosemary, green peppers, olives, and baby onions; and a radicchio salad with walnuts, elderberries, and gorgonzola that was so beautiful, my foodie friend Kara posted my photo on her Instagram. And then at Piatto Romano, where the waiter had wondered about my husband, I was way more interested in their delicious wild purslane and arugula salad with sumac dressing and grilled lamb chops than in his side-eye.

Eating my way toward contentment worked: I was full, I was satisfied, I was happy. What heartache?

Drinking wine in Montalcino

What’s Italy without wine? The Vines is a company that lets its members learn to blend wine around the world with great winemakers. That sounded just perfect to me: Learning about wine, eating local food, meeting interesting people, and drinking excellent wine. By then, I had moved to La Bandita Townhouse, equally authentic but in the urban atmosphere of Pienza, if you can call a practically unchanged 15^th-century walled Renaissance city urban.

The Vines arranged for us to tour Casanova di Neri and blended bold Brunello di Montalcino wine from various areas on the vineyard. Lunch at Sesti at Castello di Argiano was in a chapel where we sat at a table reminiscent of The Last Supper. We poured freshly pressed chartreuse olive oil from a glass pitcher, and drank their Brunello di Montalcino like it really was our last meal.

We met the young winemakers at vineyards like Tassi Montalcino, Cupano, and Tricerchi, as well as newcomers like Bakkanali, where they grow Sangiovese and cabernet grapes in volcanic soil. Each evening either started or ended with a Negroni on the Pienza wall overlooking the Tuscan hills.

Of course I felt lonely some nights back in my room; I admit I watched a few of Jillian’s recorded monthly sessions, like “Emotional Availability” and “Healing Anxious Attachment,” from my starched white hotel sheets. But the whirlwind of discovering a magical countryside, resuscitating my previously forgotten Italian verbs, and just having new experiences daily began to take over my brain — and my heart. The wine helped, too.

Hiking in the Apennines

You may be wondering how I could eat and drink this much with abandon knowing I’d have to go back to reality at some point. The apex of my adventure would be at The Ranch Italy, a luxurious healthy retreat that’s known for strenuous hikes and offers a 4-day or 7-day experience that aims to combat all the Brunello and bruschetta you consumed before arriving. The same smart group from The Ranch Malibu has set up camp at Palazzo Fiuggi in the Apennine mountains an hour outside of Rome.

The Ranch had emailed a 30-day prep countdown, which I basically ignored, figuring that would be their problem when I arrived. As I scarfed my last panini con prosciutto in my hotel room just before starting the program, it occurred to me that my attitude had been a huge mistake. I learned quickly that my days began with a 6 am wake-up call, 6:30 stretch class, breakfast at 7, and a 7:30 departure to drive to the trailhead, equipped with two-way radios and walking poles. The hikes range from seven to 10 miles. (18,356 to 24,178 steps mostly uphill, but who’s counting?) I’m not going to lie, they were challenging, but in a positive, “I can’t believe I did this!” kind of way.

It wasn’t just about the steps, though. We saw Roman arches and deserted medieval towns, a saddle between valleys and hikers making a pilgrimage on the Camino del Benedetto, and we rang local bells for good luck.

The afternoons were filled with voluntary fitness classes, restorative yoga, deep tissue massages, and all that the spa offered, including plenty of hot/cold plunges, a salt room, infrared sauna, and the famous Fiuggi drinking water that supposedly reduces the size of kidney stones. Since it’s a “medical wellness retreat” the treatments range from IV drips to thalassotherapy (baths of magnesium and other minerals) to “regeneration of the scalp” to aufguss (a sauna with ice balls and minty oils) to psammo (a massage on a bed of quartz sand to the sound of Tibetan bells).

Between hiking, eating bushels full of veggies and lentils, and plunging into freezing cold water, I felt not just refreshed but reinvigorated in a way that was exciting. The breakup receded and I formed a new attachment — this time, to Italy.

When I finally did speak to Jillian after I returned home, she explained why a change of perspective — especially after a big event like mine — is so important: “Life becomes very uncertain after a breakup; we’re thrust into the unknown. Most people try to find that security outside of themselves. Instead, build certainty inside of you, push yourself out of your comfort zone. Do something radical, book that trip, go sing karaoke, get out of yourself,” she said. And even more effective, explained Jillian, is getting out of town entirely. “Any time you change your zip code, you expand your mind,” she said. “When we travel, we are exposed to new things and almost become a new person. That’s very liberating.”

Plus, I learned a lot on my hikes that applies to life back home: We’re all on our own path. An uphill climb gets easier the more you do it. And you don’t need to know the end point — just look for the flags along the way, and keep putting one foot in front of the other.