Back to Italy

Morning: off to the airport, the flight to Milan, and the drive north. We abandoned the plan to trace the mountain stages of the Tour de France. We’d had enough challenging travel in Morocco, and wanted just to relax. We headed north to one of the lakes in Italy’s northern lakes district, Lago Maggiore, and looked for a hotel. We followed a sign into a tiny little port town, Caldé, and then couldn’t find the hotel. I asked at a bar, and a flirty Italian man told me I wanted to go to the wine bar and speak to Luca. Luca took me to his guest house and showed me a perfect suite with a view out front of the lake, and out back of the garden. Across the street is a children’s playground, and a 10-second walk away is the waterfront. The wine bar is so beautiful, so elegant, that we could just move in here.

We spent two days here in Caldé in heaven. I spent a fair bit of time explaining to Ria what heaven is. Atheists have a slightly different view than the traditional Christian one, but it’s a nice view, and it’s good for appreciating what you’ve got. So we reveled in our good luck, got to know Luca and his beautiful village, and generally thought seriously about never leaving.

We all agreed that although our hotel in Cinque Terre was dramatic, the riad in Marrakech stunning, the Kasbah in Skoura historic, and the tent in the Sahara unique beyond words, our time in Luca’s guesthouse was the best part of the vacation. We were exhausted from the challenges of traveling in Morocco, and not only was the guesthouse just perfect, Luca grew into a friend. We hope to see him often. If you're in the area, please go stay with him, and tell him Susan and Thom sent you.

We also all agreed that we need to spend more time in Europe, and came up with a plan for next year. We plan to pull Ria out of school at the beginning of spring break (she’ll be in kindergarten again, as per the Waldorf plan, so she won’t be academically stilted by this) and spend eight weeks in southern France. Thom will join us at the beginning and the end, and otherwise stay home and work as intensively as he can. In preparation for the trip, Ria and I have been working on our French now that we’re home.

We gave up our plan to drive the mountain stages of the Tour de France to come here, and when we got home, we discovered that the individual time trial of the Giro d’Italia will go through the villages of Cinque Terre – if we can find TV coverage of it, we can watch that stage, instead of the TDF, to get our fill of “I remember that corner, we ate at that café!”