WANDERS
TRAVEL
VACATIONING CLOSER TO HOME BY JEREMY WAYNE
Apologies Peter, Paul and Mary (and composer John Denver), but I’m not “leaving on a jet plane.” At least, not any time soon. If airports weren’t bad enough before Covid — security lines; standing stock-still in full body scanners, hands above one’s head, like the most maladroit child in the gym class preparing for a jumping jack; personal humiliation as one’s underwear is forensically examined in public — one can only imagine the fandango now. And don’t get me started on masks, which are, by the way, utterly necessary. The last time I wore a mask in public — at least until a couple of months ago — was 30 years ago when I attended the glamorous Volpi Ball in Venice. Well, I say “attended,” but what I really mean is gate-crashed. I borrowed a tuxedo from an usher at La Fenice opera house and my girlfriend jazzed up a little black number, which cost around $20 from H&M, I recall, with a feather boa — quite fetching,
76
WAGMAG.COM AUGUST 2020
but so synthetic that once false move with the cigarette lighter and the entire Palazzo Volpi would have gone up in flames. If she looked conspicuous amid the Valentinos and Versaces, everybody was far too polite to say. This summer, by contrast, there will be no airports for me, no high jinx on the Grand Canal. Instead, I will be rebonding with my car, which has been standing idle in my driveway for far too long, undriven, unloved. First up, I’d like to get back to Maine, if the Maine-iacs will have this not-so-native New Yorker, to check out The Tides, a 21room Victorian inn, dating from 1899, in a prime position looking over the Goose Rocks Beach in Kennebunkport. Two of its suites have been decorated by Jonathan Adler (whom we profiled in March WAG,) while in the main lounge, soothing cream and taupe upholstery along with shell lamps and rope chandeliers appear to reference the ocean, without any navy-blue seaside clichés. The Tides is said to have a terrific restaurant too, where executive chef
