We had spent a solid morning seeing the sights of Verona – the main square called Piazza Bras, the Roman colosseum, even fake Juliet’s fake house and fake balcony (where we secured our first love lock as a couple), along with a walk along a few of the crooked, narrow streets and alleys spoking off from the main square. It was the kind of sightseeing that would last me for a week, if not a month. For Carol, of course, we were just getting started.

   Every seven years there is a special dance performed during Germany’s version of Mardi Gras day. It’s called, in English, the Coopers Dance. It commemorates a celebration staged by Munich’s barrel makers following the city’s deadly bout with the Black Plague back in 1517. The dance was designed to give the plague’s survivors something to smile about again. I guess, for the average  Munchener in 1517, if the barrel makers were dancing happily in the streets, it meant they were making barrels again, and that meant the brewers were making beer again.

   Carol and I were having a glass or two in a pleasantly traditional German restaurant on the first evening of our arrival in Europe, the start of a month-long Eurail train trip through Italy. Apropo of nothing more than jet lag, perhaps, Carol suddenly asked brightly, “Shouldn’t we start talking about where we’re going?”

   If there had been any shred of doubt (and there hasn’t been) that Carolyn’s loving, generosity of spirit was alive and well amongst us, it came with our seat assignments for Carol’s and my flight to Europe this past Saturday. Care must be taken to avoid seeming to wallow in privilege, so this story bears a bit of a run up.

Site of my first and only public spanking for eating my lunch during class time, and trying to impress Melanie Ybarzabel, my first grade girlfriend (tho she had no idea of that status, of course) “We’ll go see lites in St. Bernard And what they got that’s gone… Atlantic Thrift…Ain’t dere no more Drug store […]

   Our big streetcar trip up St. Charles Ave. was aborted midway through, due to a 7-alarm fire that consumed a historic home in the Garden District. No one was injured, and anyway that wasn’t the biggest crisis that afflicted Carol and I at the start of our New Orleans adventure. At a French Quarter eatery just after our arrival in the city, I was served what was the first in what would become a Homeric odyssey of po boys over the next three days. But the “French bread” – within which my shrimp lay defenseless for my impending masticating assault  – was soft! And spongy! With the interior texture of marshmallow! And not French bread at all! It was a lese majeste of gargantuan proportions.

If there was any doubt I was back in the city where I grew up but as a hayseed tourist this time, it was made clear in my very first steps onto Bourbon St.

   “I can tell you where you got your shoes,” a tall, African American man said walking straight up to me. Still possessing the sting of having lost $10 on this scam some thirty years ago on a Mardi Gras visit to New Orleans, I was ready for it this time.

It’s not overstating it to suggest a visit to New Orleans is a great tune up for an extended trip to Europe. Parts of the city come closest to the look and feel of Europe that no other city in the United States can muster. New Orleans is unique, I think, among American cities in that way. European cities of comparable size all seem to come with a charm, grace, pace and architectural beauty that is at once nostalgically Old World, yet eminently livable by every modern measure. European cities are as much playground as centers of commerce. They clang, ring, chime and clatter. Cafes spill cheerful patrons onto sidewalks and along cobbled squares. They effuse joie de vie, gemütlichkeit and la bella vita. They invite walking, if not pure wandering.

  For our first Valentine’s Day together, Carol suggested filet mignon and a movie at home. “The restaurants here are all crazy on Valentine’s,” she explained. I’m blessed her idea of crazy matches mine, especially when it comes to dining. It will, though, be my first Valentine’s Day lacking any exuberant panache or over-the-top flair.

Back in the early 1970s, at the height of my self-delusion of single handedly saving the world, I applied to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH. I remember writing the required biographical essay in language so flowery that I had to water it before sealing it in the envelope. So filled with myself at the time I might have included a photo of me in leotards and a cape. I never heard back from Antioch, not even a form rejection letter. I think it was the cape, though it might have been the leotards