Katy Perry Vacations Hard, Especially When Traveling With Her Kid

Courtesy of De Soi

Katy Perry is the reigning queen of the Mediterranean. Come summer, you can count on the emergence of paparazzi pics depicting the pop star smooching fiancé Orlando Bloom in Sardinia, catching dinner after a day of yachting in Dubrovnik, and jetskiing with her daughter Daisy in Saint-Tropez. It’s no wonder Perry vacations so hard, given the relentless pace of her music career. Later this week, she’ll end a six-year stint as judge on American Idol, and she wrapped up her wildly popular Las Vegas residency a few months ago. On a recent episode of Idol, she teased a new single, and her next album is expected later this year.

Ever the entrepreneur, Perry found a way to marry her love of la dolce vita with business: On Monday, May 20, her line of non-alcoholic apéritifs, De Soi, releases a new flavor inspired by the beloved beverage of the famous European boot. “Spritz Italiano!” Perry says in an Italian accent. “We love calling it that, especially the ‘o’ part of the Italian-o. It feels like a dance on your tongue.” The flavor includes hints of bittersweet citrus, crisp grape, and earthy gentian root. “It really embodies that feeling of having an Italian spritz at the beach [with] a goblet glass of ice. It just feels so good and tastes so right.”

The herbaceous gentian taste in the new flavor is reminiscent of everyone’s favorite sunny-day drink, an Aperol spritz. “When De Soi started, we launched with a few flavors and my favorite flavor was Purple Lune, which reminded me of a full-bodied cab[ernet] or a heavier pinot noir. I loved it and was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to live by this. This is my only flavor,’” Perry says. “And then Très Rosé came out, and it’s Daisy’s and my favorite flavor. Well, that’s been trumped!”

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.”

Perry has more traveling-with-a-kid tips where those came from. “Lots of snacks. Daisy is a fantastic eater. Lots of coloring. The non-messy Play-Doh is amazing, and she loves using children’s scissors and cutting the Play-doh. There’s something meditative about making these tiny little cuts, so she will not stop,” she says. “And of course, I use an iPad if the flight is over nine hours, so she gets to watch her favorite movies and play games. But even if you let the child have her iPad for two hours, they get bored. They want other types of stimulation.”

Other items in her mom arsenal include coloring water pads that don’t make any mess, and a blackout tent to throw over the hotel crib. “As they’re acclimating, you can put them down at six if they need it,” she says. “You have to do a lot of pre-planning.”

On the horizon for their family is a journey far from Mediterranean shores. “Orlando has a son that we get to spend a lot of time with, who’s 13, and he’s all of a sudden into the idea of Tokyo. That’s Orlando’s and my favorite spot,” Perry says. “I’m excited for [Daisy] to be of an age where she can see the difference between where she lives—Montecito, which is really natural with mountains and ocean—and an incredible, futuristic city like Tokyo.”

A return to Venice and more time in her fiancé’s native England are also top of the list. Naturally, Katy Perry says, “We'll be spritzing all along the way.”

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler