Return to Italy, Part 1

After 31 years, finally ... finally! ... I returned to Italy. My husband Angel and I took a two-week Tauck tour. There are tours and there are tours, and Tauck is one of the best. Angel is well-traveled but had never been to Italy before, and I wanted him to see what I remembered loving from 1969.

After the first week ended, Angel said, 'If I had to go home today, the price would have been worth it...what a beautiful country.'

We began in Rome, two days early, and met up with the Tour on Saturday, driving immediately to the Amalfi Coast.

Our first stop was Ravello. The wisteria arbor is on a hillside overlooking the water. There I bought a cameo of a woman with hair flying, birds on her shoulders, pearls twisted through her hair. Every time I look at her, I think 'freedom'.

It rained off and on the whole time we were in Sorrento. We stayed at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria...one thing about that Tour, we loved every hotel, and it spoiled me for what I came to expect from hotels. Our room was magical, all white, old white tile floors, a basket of fruit and bottle of wine on a simple wooden table in the center of the room, an antique iron bed, a view of the Bay. This ceramic Bacchus, at the very top of the wall in the shop, was shipped to New Jersey, arriving three months after we arrived home. He has come back to Italy with us, now hanging in our beautiful small kitchen, next to our 14th century wall fresco. For years, he was the centerpiece of our kitchen in New Jersey, sometimes living in the summer outside on a patio wall.
This is a dramatic interior of one of the striped Tuscan Romanesque churches of the Amalfi coast. This architecture affects me more than any of the Baroque or Renaissance wonders of Rome or Florence. So spare and dramatic, so functional and inspiring.