Gaskets or Bust

And so the journey begins.

October 1/12:32
On the way to Dulles, I hear, "That's the reason I'm going to Italy. I have to get Nan's coffee maker gaskets."

So I am going to Italy for the first time to be a party to obtaining some $2.00 rubber seals unavailable in the States.

Fine, then. The reason is immaterial. I am going to Italy.

My life-long passion for art history, the focus of (let's be real here) almost five years of my life spent studying (with assorted extra-cirricular activities interspersed) is finally going to achieve ultimate satisfaction with two weeks to see all the things I know solely from slides and books.

Plus we will bring back coffee maker gaskets.

October 1/1:30
In Dulles, in line to check baggage at Air France, I watch as one confused person after another inquires of a handsome but expressionless Air France employee.

Finally, I can't help but ask, "Is your job to help clueless people?"

His impassivity melts and he breaks into a face-splitting smile including major dimples. "Yes," he answers.

Walking toward the baggage check-in, a ticketing agent catches my eye and smiles widely.

Coincidentally, he is the ticket agent we get when we reach the front of the line.

"We've met before," I say, handing him my underpacked bag."Yes, indeed," he says grinning. When he hears our destination, he is even more enthusiastic, wishing he were also headed there.

Finally through Security (and an hysterical incident with my partner involving a full body pat-down and any number of lewd references), we decide lunch is in order.

I suggest a meal unlike anything we will eat for the next two weeks and we land at Five Guys, only my second time there ever.

Today's potatoes are from Royal City, Washington, which is not half as big a deal as the size of a "regular" french fry.

I'd like to go on record as saying that when a serving of fries nearly fills a brown paper lunch bag, we need to do a lot more than plant a White House garden.

Finally on board Air France, I begin "Chanel: A Woman of Her Own," but eventually succumb to a French comedy.

"The Chef" is a film about a talented but hapless man with a talent for food but little tolerance for diners with no taste for adventure ("You hit a man for ordering his veal medium.")

But the chef's brilliance is how he hears and feels emotion in food, telling his 3-Michelin star mentor about his ex-wife, "Since Charlotte left you, your sauces are stagnant."

If ever there was proof of the importance of the right woman, it is the effect her departure has on a man's sauces.

Metaphor intended.

Before I knew it, the flight ended and it was midnight in Paris.

We landed in a light drizzle and if ever there was a romantic place to be at that hour, this was it.

AlItalia got us to Rome not long after sunrise, an equally impressive feeling.

In the first half an hour in the Rome airport, I saw more priests than I have seen in the past twenty years.

I remain no less lapsed a Catholic than before all the men in black and white, but it was startling nonetheless.

Taking a commuter train to the train station, I get my first glimpses of Italy from the ground.

From my window, I see scores of apartment buildings with two things in common.

Nearly all of them have balconies and they are crowded with planters, window boxes and every kind of container to hold lush, trailing, colorfully flowering plants.

Each balcony is a study in lush container gardening.

In marked contrast to that is the more mundane, but no less  charming, laundry.

Clothes lines are strung up between windows, on balconies, over guardrails, on wooden racks and practically any place where clothes can hang to dry.

Frequently, I see blankets and bedspreads airing off a balcony rail.

Flowers and wet clothes follow the train into the Rome train station.

It's a bustling place with Italian women in impossibly high shoes and boots, men who brazenly check out women from hair to toenails and pigeons strolling around the terminal.

October 2/11:25
The high speed Frecciarosa train bullets us through a picture-perfect Italian landscape to Florence.

Before we leave the station, I have need of a facility and use my first pay (one euro) bathroom, although I miscalculate and end up in the men's room unbeknownst to me.

Only after I exit the stall does a friendly attendant notice and apologize as if he'd made the error.

He graciously leads me out, no doubt already realizing what a great story this will be to share with coworkers.

I, for the record, am not the slightest bit embarrassed, but rather glad to have relieved myself.

The B & B is small (eight rooms), the hostess is a scooter-riding Italian character who serves us almond cake while we wait for our room to be readied.

It is at this point that our 21-hour odyssey catches up and we open the balcony door and collapse on to the bed for an epic mid-afternoon Italian nap.

The siesta acts like a tonic on us, allowing us to head out into the Florence evening with renewed enthusiasm and faith in ourselves.

Because it is early evening, everyone is out promenading and although we pass any number of Renaissance marvels, I am not ready to take them in except as foreground for a magnificent sky of gray-blue clouds.

After wandering for just the right amount of time, we head to Trattoria al Trebbio, a candlelit space almost full of happy-looking diners.

The first day gods are smiling on us and we are able to get a table in the charming and romantic little patio in the center of where two narrow streets intersect near Santa Maria Novella.

There are only seven tables and traffic of all kinds - scooters, cars and pedestrian- go by on two sides.

At one point, a car attempts to make  left turn and a diner turns her head and from three feet away from the car, calmly says, "This is a one-way street."

The car backs up and heads down another street.

Meanwhile we order a bottle of Calafuria Rosato del Salento to toast our home for the next fortnight.

A pear and Pecorino salad over rocket and carrot hits all the right sweet and salty notes.

Italian pulled pork with vegetables in oil is a lesson in pig.

Unlike our American shredded version, this is thinly-sliced pig in a delicate au jus with artichokes and rocket.

Crusty bread enables us to get as much au jus as humanly possible.

As we sit there people watching, I am struck by how stylish even older couples look and how much hand-holding I see.

As we finished the pork, an accordion player took up his post across the street, as if on cue.

Come on Florence, don't be trite.

Wining and dining has left us little room for dessert, so we opt for a fresh fruit salad of kiwi, grapes, pineapple, peaches and pears, a fine European way to end two very long days.

And the best is yet to come.