At the end of September I returned from a 10-day
vacation in Italy a few pounds lighter than the day I left. It’s a mystery to
me because I ate what everybody else ate and just as late. Try sleeping
peacefully after a thanksgiving-like huge Italian meal every night. Wine at
every meal, two bottles of water on every table, gas or no gas, (aka fizzy or
flat), and 10 days of non-stop travel. From the Swiss Alps to Venice, Florence,
Rome and the Vatican, we hoofed many miles a day. I’m thinking that the wine,
water and walking was my secret weapon. Actually, it was probably the water and
walking because I not a fan of wine.
My husband and I
don’t travel much, (Lake George five years ago), so flying over the pond to
Europe was a big deal. Because I was told Italians don’t hang out in blue jeans
and t-shirts like we do, I bought a whole new travel wardrobe. It now fills my
closet as a reserve for job interviews, weddings and funerals.
The last time I saw
so many cigarette smokers, cigarettes cost 50 cents a pack. In Italy you can
turn your lungs black for 10 times that now. Like here, you’re not allowed to
light-up in restaurants, so running a gauntlet of outside smelly smokers is the
norm. Unlike here, your dog, (not only a service dog but your pet), may
accompany you to dinner in restaurants. The ones we saw were always well
behaved, not so with some children, but that’s another story.
We started out in the
north of Italy. The breathtaking mountainous vistas and villages looked exactly
like every WWII movie I’ve ever watched. On the train to Switzerland the scenes
were so spectacular that even though we weren’t in Austria, I half-expected to
see a young Julie Andrews break out in “the hills are alive with music.”
I cannot express how
beautiful Turano and the Italian Alps are. As a microclimate protected from the
harshness of the high regions by the mountains, the valley was lush with palm
trees and an autumn harvest of every fruit imaginable, plus miles and miles of
vineyards clinging to the mountains on steep slopes almost to the tree line. My
husband’s grandparents were from that area. No wonder their gardens, grapes and
wine making here became family tradition.
To elaborate on the
jaw-dropping scenic sights, or the magnificent artistic and architectural
monuments to Italian creativity, would only serve as redundancy in regards to
travel brochures. Visually Italy is indeed everything everyone says it is,
spectacular, beautiful and very old with a modern mix far ahead of many.
The only serious
negative I can come up is the life threatening, aggressive and absolutely
maddening way Italians drive. Two-way city streets are as narrow as a driveway.
Even though cars are tiny, trucks and buses are not. Put a bunch of
buzzed-by-expresso Italians behind the wheels of a Fiat, throw in a couple of
full-size tour buses, a handful of delivery trucks, half a dozen insane
scooter-drivers, (who make the white line their lane), toss in the six of us in
a nine person van with a GPS which assumed Rome, N.Y., was Rome, Italy, and you
have a mix that would curl every insurance agent’s hair. It had me whimpering
in the back seat.
Maneuvering the
narrow mountain roads wasn’t that bad, it was worse. Imagine driving down from
the summit of Mt. Washington in two-way heavy traffic at 60 mph, with scooters
whizzing by, and you get a sense of how lucky I felt to be alive when I sat
down to a late night dinner every night.
Italy is spectacular,
we loved it. And I have the memories and wardrobe to prove it.
