My record for selecting hotels conveniently located to train stations and appearing to be safe, in addition to being great values, held firm through the first four major stops on our Italian itinerary. Our hotel in Munich was a short walk to the train as well as the great shopping and pedestrian mall of Karlsplatz. Ditto for Verona and Cinque Terre. In Florence we were so close to the terminal, the hotel was named after it. The famous Duomo there was less than a ten minute walk away (thirty if you had followed along with my instinct for directions after dinner that one night.) Then came Naples.

  Back in the early 70s, I was traveling by car with a companion who got the jeep stuck in a ditch in northern Italy. I dispatched myself to go for help. Knowing the rural isolation of the area had probably not sprouted an English speaker, I realized I’d probably have to make myself understood in Italian. We’d been driving in Italy for a couple of hours, so I believed I’d sufficiently gotten the handle on the essence of the language, which to my mind simply meant adding a vowel such as “a” or “o” to the end of the English word. For instance the word for “arrive” in Italian is “arrivo.”

   I’m not sure the precise moment when I knew I was being hustled by “Giovanni” (if that was even his real name), but by the time he’d steered Carol and I away from Naples’s Castle Sant’Elmo that we were looking for and he had promised to direct us to, I knew we were being hustled.

   Our Tuscania hosts, Mark and Ginger, were leading Carol and I on a walk through their lovely, ancient and quiet town toward a restaurant for a “light lunch.” As we walked, Ginger told us about the restaurant we’d be going to that night. “There’ll be eight courses including desserts (dessertS!), and all the wine you can drink.” This is what I was loving about Italy so far: We were going to lunch talking about dinner.

Someone asked Carol and I recently whether we met any interesting people on our travels. Carol found the question amusing, as it had been addressed to me as well as her. Carol has observed that about the only other entities I go more out of my way to avoid besides museums, ruins of any kind and churches are people. It begs the question then, as to how I get any enjoyment out of travel, but I do. It’s a mystery.

  Carol was determined to maintain a dietary regimen in a country whose entire life rhythm revolves around mealtime. Whenever I’d mention aspects of the glorious Italian culture and history, such as “bread,” “lasagna” and “gelato”, Carol would wag a matronly finger and under a determined, arched eyebrow, admonish: “We’re gonna be good, Reid.”

   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 […]