Italy was an easy muse for Perry, who has criss-crossed the peninsula from Lake Como to Venice, Milan to Bologna, Rome to Capri. “As far as vacation goes, I always end up going to the Amalfi Coast,” she says. “I mean, it never gets old. There’s a lot of tourists, so you have to find a different season than peak if you want to experience not being a sardine.”
Typically, though, it’s the slower change of pace—and the food; “I’m a carb girl,” she says—that draws Perry to Italy again and again. “I have been in the little cobblestone streets of the smallest towns on the coast of Italy, or even in Florence—and when they take their siesta, they really mean it. Everything is closed,” she says. “What’s the Italian saying? Dolce far niente! You see these older people playing games, and kids in the streets. You see cats lying everywhere. Everyone’s tanned, beautiful, sunkissed, just enjoying life. It looks like a commercial for travel.” It’s that art of doing nothing she hopes De Soi drinkers get around to this summer, “just sipping and lounging and swimming.”
The photo evidence shows that Perry isn’t exactly the type to do nothing on vacation, as she’s most often captured on the Mediterranean partaking in water sports. “I’m a swimmer. I love being in the ocean. I love trying all the restaurants. Orlando and I are big foodies, especially when we come for European vacations,” she says. “On holiday, I really have to learn how to chill, because my life is a hundred miles per hour when I’m home. I have to find that zen.”
There’s something else impacting her approach to holidays these days: daughter Daisy, who turns four this summer. “Everything is so alive for her. At night, she wants to make a tent in the sheets on the bed, and she feels like she is traveling from this tent and wants to bring all her stuffies,” Perry says. “So she loves to travel. I always try and take a flight that could possibly promise some sleep. But I get there and there’s something about the ocean that really restores you. If you jump in the water and soak in the sunlight for a right amount of time, the kids snap into gear. It’s actually the adults that have the most jet lag these days.”
