The travel issue: what does a provincial clod who never leaves the Hamptons have to say?
The reasons I don’t travel, with examples
My dilemma: this is the travel issue of Hamptons Magazine, but I write only about the Hamptons. Beside that, I don’t go anyplace. I would rather be in these beautiful villages along the Atlantic shore than anywhere else in the world. I’ve been reluctant to tell people that I don’t like to travel. Travel talk is one of the touchstones of conversation among the rich and sophisticated and worldly people you run across in the Hamptons all the time now—and who wants to appear as some provincial clod among these swells?
The truth is I feel I don’t need to travel because all good things eventually come here, to this best of all possible places. It’s a hard argument to make however when your pals ask whether you’ll be in St. Barth’s or Aspen over the holidays. My advice is just to fake it and let the cognoscenti believe you’ll be in whichever place they won’t be. Of course, no reader will need this advice because I’m sure anyone foolish enough to feel the way I do would never let the truth be known.
Having admitted this much, I will now step further out on the limb and tell you the reasons and give you examples of why it is a relief for me not to have to wander around in strange places.
The trip to the airport. It might be nothing if you are in a limo from the Upper East Side, but when you are schlepping suitcases on the Hampton Jitney to the airport connection in Flushing, where a cab may or may not meet you, it’s something. And if I am coming from East Hampton and planning to get to Kennedy before check-in on an international flight, my travel time up until departure (if it leaves on time) might be a few minutes shorter than my flight to London.
Sitting in a car. I find myself strapped to a seat in a car where I can’t find the lights or air conditioning and I have to shift because Europeans don’t like automatics. What looks on the map like a nice drive to a little restaurant for lunch turns out be half way across Portugal, where all the signs are placed one hundred meters after you need them for directions. When I finally arrive, the restaurant has stopped serving and the whole town is on its way home to take a nap. Even with our crazy traffic in the Hamptons, I can get from my house to the Classic in fifteen minutes and to two or three parties on a Saturday night.
Getting a table in a restaurant. So, I get to Paris and get on the phone to make some reservations. It takes a couple of hours because I put the emphasis on the wrong syllable in a word in some silly French sentence I was cobbling together. The dominatrix at the other end of the phone line is unforgiving and refuses to even consider a table until I pronounce the word her way. And when I get there, all they give me is, well, good food. Even though I go to the restaurant du jour, if not of the moment, I am not sure if I have the right table—and it may not count anyway since I don’t recognize anyone in the place—or maybe my table is the reason they are ignoring me. Staying at home on the other hand assures me of a decent table at Savanna or Nick & Toni’s or Della Femina, and I know half the people in the room and I can table hop and have some fun.
That’s my confession. But if you meet me at a party and I brag about some marvelous hotel where I just stayed in Venice, bear with me. You know it’s all a lie.
Truth in journalism: Any opinions expressed in this column are almost certainly not those of my editors.