This essay is a part of Companion Fare, a series of personal stories about nonromantic love and travel.
Despite how it may seem, Holly is not my wife—not legally, at least. But I’m well aware of what our relationship looks like. This summer, we spent three leisurely days together on Lake Como, in Italy, floating in the water and sharing caprese by the pool. Then we went into the city and checked into the palatial Park Hyatt Milano in the center of Milan. For the duration of our stay, we sat side by side every morning at our marble double vanity, painting our faces with full glam makeup. We’d slip into our favorite outfits, for no real reason other than to stroll aimlessly under the brutal August sun. We’d pop into trattorias, museums, and shops, taking photos of each other like Instagram husbands. In the afternoons, we’d relax in our pristine suite, Holly reading in the deep soaking tub and me screaming at the Olympics on TV, sprawled diagonally on the king-size bed we shared. What could be more romantic?
Holly is my best friend, and she is my favorite travel partner. That may sound redundant, but those roles are not synonymous. As many of us have learned on trips gone wrong, being close with someone doesn’t mean you travel well together. But ever since Holly and I met in Paris over 15 years ago, as two butter-bloated degenerates studying abroad at the Sorbonne (a history we honor with our matching tattoos of sticks of butter), we’ve gone on a grand honeymoon-worthy vacation nearly every year.
Our destinations are often places I’m visiting for my work as a writer—London; Ischia, Italy; southern Portugal; Park City, Utah. But she and I also regularly rent small Airbnbs in the American wilderness, a New Year’s Eve tradition we’ve designed around protecting my traumatized Chihuahua from fireworks. On a recent Fourth of July, while I was undergoing chemotherapy, Holly came to see me in New York City, threw me and my dog in the backseat of a rental car, and drove us to a farm upstate—not to shoot us, but to give my dog respite from the crackling booms and me a few nights of fresh air.
This past summer, Holly married a wonderful man. She and her new husband didn’t plan a honeymoon and said they may never get around to it; they had other trips already on the horizon. So shortly after her wedding, I took the liberty of planning a blowout “friendmoon” for Holly and me: I had a work trip to Bellagio, the picturesque resort town on Lake Como, and then Milan. I was invited to bring someone along; they could stay with me in my room and join me for meals.
My travels often, but not always, come with a plus-one. I always pitch to Holly first. My emergency contact, my soulmate, my sort of spouse. Holly, who has to pay for her plane ticket, is nearly always willing to do the reckless thing and abandon her responsibilities to tag along. “When you consider lodging…” she always says, a running joke where she justifies the expense of the ticket. I nod vigorously. “Yes!” I egg her on. “When you consider lodging!”
In Bellagio, we stayed at the Grand Villa Hotel Serbelloni, an opulent lakeside resort and a wedding venue that’s always buzzing with honeymooners and about-to-be fiancés. Our days were ripe with platonic romance: couples’ spa treatments, a private boat tour, sunset aperitivo overlooking the shimmering lake. (Holly and I have come a long way from the eight-to-a-room hostels of Edinburgh, Barcelona, and Aix-en-Provence, France, from our study abroad romps.) During our intimate boat ride, our driver slowed down in front of the lush terraced gardens of Villa Balbianello. He told us that many people get engaged in this exact spot. He paused. Did we want a photo? I translated for Holly, like I always do when we’re in Italy, as she smiles broadly. Yes, we do, thank you.
It’s always struck me as odd that spectacular picturesque getaways like this have become signifiers of romance. I’ve found that, in the popular imagination, extravagant or “special” trips necessitate a particular marital status. There are big friend trips like bachelorette parties (though still wedding-adjacent) or in some cases milestone birthdays, but I don’t often see one-on-one friend trips, particularly not as I trudge towards my mid-30s. In our travels to higher-end hotels in particular, Holly and I seem to be the only people traveling as a pair of friends. Sipping matching bergamot spritzes on a terrace overlooking the lake, or pouring each other coffee at breakfast in the grand ballroom, we are surrounded by couples celebrating relationship milestones or spoiling their families.
“Are you two together?” a friendly traveler once asked us in the elegant lobby of the Mandarin Oriental in London. Holly leaned into reply yes, as I sat basically on her lap, sipping a glass of Champagne. Only later did we understand how he’d meant it.
Outside of vacation planning, I watch people devalue intimacy beyond their romantic partnerships, pouring less time and energy into friendships as their nuclear families—understandably—take priority. Our civic institutions do the same. For example, because I’m single in the romantic sense, I can’t get the health benefits I need from any of my loved ones. Holly (and all of my friends, for that matter) would happily add me to their health insurance plans, if friendships were recognized as a valid status. There are deeply meaningful partnerships that are built on mutual support and no less intimate for existing outside of the romantic and sexual realms.
For years, people have assumed Holly and I are romantically involved from the looks of our beautiful vacations. (When I returned from Como, my neighbor asked me if I had gotten married and didn’t tell him, because he thought, having seen my photos with Holly on Instagram, that I was on my honeymoon.) While marriage comes with a set of rules, legal protections, and built-in expectations around choosing each other first, there’s less of a social script for deeply intimate lifelong friendships. Within and without our travels, Holly and I have written our own script. We both believe that alternate types of intimate relationships are worthy of shared extravagant travel. And when it comes to lying in crisp, fluffy hotel beds, silently watching TikToks in tandem, we will always choose to do so together.
But that’s not to say our relationship is devoid of romance. On our trips we are constantly spoiling each other with little gifts. In Bellagio, I returned from a solo walk with overpriced his-and-hers novelty calendario: a Chihuahua one for me and one for Holly covered in tabby cats that look just like her two at home. When she visits me in Brooklyn, she immediately gets to work on cleaning out all the rotting contents of my fridge, without me ever asking. We often talk about me moving in with her and her husband one day, maybe in a pool house. I start these conversations in the cadence of a joke, but we both know we’re serious.
Our last night in Italy, we grabbed ruby red Campari cocktails at the elegant Mio Lab bar on the first floor of the Park Hyatt. Holly asked if I remembered our first international trip together as grown-up college grads, before they got swanky but after they involved bunk beds. We stayed at a midlevel hotel chain in downtown Ghent, Belgium, with no roaming cellphone plans or Internet on our phones. After a night out with a ragtag group of locals we met at a bicycle-themed bar, Holly told me she wanted to go home with someone who lived out in the suburbs.
“You wrote our hotel address on my arm in lipstick,“ she remembers, laughing. I’d stayed up all night, worrying she’d never find her way back or that her one-night stand had killed her. Tonight, thankfully, we are going home together–just an elevator ride upstairs, where we’ll slip into couples’ robes and slippers and plan our next big trip.
