A few days ago I returned from an exciting adventure: I attended The Secret Retreat, a photography workshop in beautiful Castellabate, Italy. It was the experience of a lifetime, and while I love and prefer to be home, I am so incredibly glad that I went. I found out about this wonderful event through Facebook. After attending The Inspired Story last year in Texas, a friend from that conference posted about The Secret Retreat. Within a few hours of learning about it I had paid my deposit and was dreaming about photographing, learning, and connecting with other female photographers in Italy! Ah!
I have some flight anxiety and the idea of flying across the ocean by myself really intimidated me. Thankfully, my flight to Italy was easy as pie. I flew out around 4:30pm and spent nearly the entire journey editing images in Lightroom while everyone else slept 😉 It felt so good to get caught up. Our plane felt brand new and our Delta crew {per usual} were fabulous. The eight hours flew by and before I knew it was arriving in Paris to catch my connection to Naples.
{MSP > CDG & The very best ramen the airport can provide… it was the perfect fuel for the trip}
I slept most of the flight from Paris to Naples, once I arrived and made it through customs I waited at the little glass bar. Several other attendees arrived and we introduced ourselves, sipped drinks, and waited for our transfer to arrive. I was exhausted, but so happy, and the weather was glorious:
{Kerry, Laura, Kerrie, and Becky}
{My very first food and drink while in Italy: a delicious cold coffee thing and then this HUGE salad. That mozzarella was divine.}
Our transfer arrived and we took winding, coastline roads to darling Castellabate. I slept most of the way and was so grateful to sweet Rachel who gave me her scarf for her pillow. I love how considerate Brits are! We arrived at Hotel Mareluna and joined the rest of the crew.
After meeting everyone we walked to a local restaurant for dinner. They had a huge, long table all set up for us. It was beautiful. I knew I was going to eat well while in Italy, but I really had no idea how well. The food was just so fresh and everything is made to order. That meant that things came out at different times, but really, that’s fine– They kept setting down bottles of wine, sparkling or still water {always sparkling, yum!}, and we sat at that gorgeous table for hours. Dining is such an affair in Italy. A good kind of affair.
I was exhausted by the time we got back to our hotel and was able to fall asleep and didn’t wake until morning. I was so happy to get on schedule right away.
