"Arrivederci Roma. Goodbye, goodbye to Rome."
The lyrics sang across my heartstrings as I climbed aboard the train and settled in for the three-hour journey. As the clanging and puffing high-speed Eurail train rolled out of the station, I reached into my travel bag and pulled out the rustic country bread sandwich – the panino I had purchased earlier that morning from an irresistible display of authentic edible hearth-baked masterpieces. It was a great adventure to be traveling across Italy by backpack and rail with dad’s blessing and dad’s financial backing. Even though many years have come and gone since that passage of time when the world stretched wide open with its panorama of possibilities, my memories are as fresh as if they had just been baked.
At the time, my dad’s third wife suggested to me that I should journal my experiences.“Write some travel articles, dear, that you can later put into a book,” my high-achieving stepmother with her freshly inked PhD advised. But instead I gave her prophetic suggestion “the boot” and simply stepped into each day of my Italian adventure with gusto and verve, allowing the experiences to become forever pressed into the pages of my memory bank.
Like any traveler enthralled with a new destination, I reveled in the delight of discovery. I learned that new culinary discoveries are often as memorable as the magnificent art and architecture of the places visited. On that day my panino lunch, enjoyed during the stunning and scenic train trip to the great renaissance city of Florence where I had reservations for a week stay at Tuscany Villas left a lasting impression on my idea of a great tasting picnic sandwich.
(c) 2007 Kathi Dameron
No comments:
Post a Comment