Have you seen The Talented Mr. Ripley? It’s one of my favorite movies of all time, a thriller set against a perfect Italian backdrop:

To be young and carefree amid the blue waters and idyllic landscape of sun-drenched Italy in the late 1950s; that’s la dolce vita Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) craves- and Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) leads. When Dickie’s father asks Tom to bring his errant playboy son back home to America, Dickie and his beautiful expatriate girlfriend, Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow), never suspect the dangerous extremes to which Ripley will go to make their lifestyle his own.

Please watch it immediately if you haven’t. Then come back and read this post because it will mean much more to you after you’ve fallen in love with Dickie and Marge, because much of the movie was filmed on the island of Ischia, off the coast of Naples.

I found Ischia just as charming as her sister Capri, and while they’re always being compared to each other, I think it’s much more fun to visit both and spend your days photographing flowers.