Portofino Problems

Portofino Is Smaller Than Costco & I’m Retiring From Beach Clubs

And just like that, we’ve reached the final stop of our month in Italy: Liguria, Santa Margherita Ligure, Portofino and the Italian Riviera—where the pesto is perfect, the water is crystal clear, and apparently a luxury vacation can still involve fighting a seagull for your smoked salmon.

Anisha gives her completely unfiltered guide to Portofino, Santa Margherita Ligure, Paraggi and Cinque Terre, including why Portofino is spectacular but approximately the size of a Costco dairy section; why she chose the Imperiale Palace Hotel over the newly renovated Belmond Splendido; and why no hotel room on Earth is objectively worth $4,000 a night—so if she’s making an emotionally irrational financial decision, she refuses to repack her suitcase halfway through it.

Then: the obsessive luxury-hotel research nobody tells you to do, the exact-room-photo email every traveler should send before booking, why hotel websites are “not technically lying, but spiritually lying,” the demographic Anisha considers her unofficial luxury-hotel rating system, and the organized-crime syndicate of enormous Italian seagulls conducting precision salmon heists at breakfast.

She also gives her real Cinque Terre travel advice: the two villages she’d prioritize, why you don’t need to collect all five like Pokémon, when to hike, when absolutely not to hike, and why peak-summer Cinque Terre can feel less like an Italian fantasy and more like a group heatstroke.

And finally, after Bagni Fiore in Paraggi, Anisha formally announces her retirement from beach clubs worldwide. The babies were innocent. The parents brought what appeared to be the entire baby registry. The beach club was nearly empty. Somehow, a €300 pair of loungers still came with a front-row view of strollers, floaties and someone else’s diaper bag.

After Jondal and Blue Marlin in Ibiza, the South of France, Taormina and now Portofino, she has reached a conclusion: luxury is not proximity. Luxury is space, privacy, peace—and not having someone else’s inflatable giraffe blocking your view of the Mediterranean.

Plus: Langosteria Paraggi, why the food almost redeemed the entire experience, her husband’s ongoing transformation into a sea turtle, and the Italian Riviera hotel she predicts the internet is about to discover and make impossible to book.

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