Italy, it seems, is a country that puts up a fuss when we try to enter or exit it.

On the way toward Italy, weeks ago, we got held up in Basel when our night train was late arriving, and we missed our connection.

Basel is not a hard place to have an unexpected layover: we had two good meals and a nice walk before continuing on the next train to Milan.

Today it was our flight from Florence to Munich that was delayed, causing us to miss our onward flight to Toronto. As we had a 6-hour layover in Toronto anyway, we’ve been rebooked on the next flight, and will make it home on the originally-booked flight to Charlottetown. We got to enjoy a lovely meal in the Munich airport—supplemented by €30 in Lufthansa vouchers—rather than waiting out our YYZ purgatory at Tim Hortons.

Because I’m nothing if not a sucker for novel beverages, I ordered a Mezzo Mix to have with my smoked salmon salad; from Wikipedia:

Mezzo Mix is a product of The Coca-Cola Company, first introduced in West Germany in 1973. It is a mixture of orange soda and cola, a beverage popular in German-speaking countries, commonly known there as spezi, the generic trademark of the first brand of that type of soda.

Indeed when the waiter mixed up our order and brought me a Coke by mistake, I had him mutter spezi under his breath. It was… Coke with a hint of orange.

Onward!

We arrived in Copenhagen exactly a month ago. As I write we’re in the very pleasant sun-filled cafeteria of the tiny airport in Florence, preparing for the flights that will see us get home to Charlottetown in 20 hours.

Last night in Florence was stunningly beautiful: warm, windless, with the sliver of the Moon over the river. We had one last meal—pizza, a few doors up the street—and then walked 15 minutes for one last gelato.

This morning has gone remarkably well, given the number of branches on my scenario planning tree. I booked us a taxi for 7:00 a.m. The taxi arrived at 7:00 a.m. The driver, Oliver, was kind and helpful and we learned a lot from him; he altered our route to go through the park (“same cost, same time”) and we arrived at the airport at 7:18 a.m.

We now enter the rarified atmosphere of intercontinental travel; home is far enough away right now that it’s inconceivable that I’ll be sleeping in my own bed tonight. But—touch wood—I will.

Lisa and I carved out a tiny perfect hour together this afternoon at a tiny bar cum secondhand bookstore on Via dei Renai here in Florence. As we sat inside and watched life flow by, I had a moment to catch my breath and realize how thankful, how privileged, I am to have a loving coconspirator like Lisa to enter into adventures like this.

I am an overseas customer, a follower, and fan of Frab’s, the magazine shop in the Italian town of Forlì, an eponymous effort of Anna Frabotta.

I came across Frab’s on the same route I encountered Edicola518 in Perugia, and when it became apparent that our journey from Numana to Florence via Bologna was going to take us within spitting distance, Lisa knew enough to know that, even though the shop was closed today, I’d want to make a pilgrimage. So we did.

Forlì, it turns out, is a nice town in its own right, compact, filled with bicycle paths, and sporting a lovely town square. Frab’s is just off the square.

The shop—from the outside looking in—seemed everything I imagined it to be. I hope someday to return during opening hours.

While we could take only pictures, there was a helpfully This Box is for Good-sized letterbox at the ready, so we were able to leave something of ourselves behind at least.

On Sunday we visited the ruins of a first-century Roman amphitheatre in Gubbio; as young L. studied Roman history in school this fall, the visit was a teachable moment, as well as being fascinating in its own right.

While we pretty much had the site to ourselves, midway through an Italian couple joined us. Which is how I found myself being asked to “scream”: they were up at the top of the theatre, while I was on stage, and they wanted to hear the acoustics (we later learned that she works in a speaker factory).

Lisa had a chat with them, and ended up giving them one of our This Box is for Good boxes. She also extracted from them a recommendation to visit Portonovo if we were thinking of visiting the Adriatic coast.

As it happened, we did decide to visit the Adriatic coast, renting a house 50 m from the sea for two nights here in Numata. And tonight we had supper in Portonovo, at a restaurant called Emilia.

Our restaurant opened its doors back in 1929 with our grandmother: Emilia. Emilia would come down from Poggio to the sea to organize lunches and refreshments for the first tourists in the area, locals from Poggio, Camerano, and Ancona, who loved spending time at the beach. That’s how it all started.

Today the restaurant is managed by Emilia’s granddaughter Federica, and it was Federica who enthusiastically welcomed us to return for a table when we showed up before their 7:30 opening time.

The restaurant is right on the water, and we had a lovely meal of seafood—I had spaghetti with mussels to start, followed by mixed grilled fish; both were excellent.

For dessert I had “pannacotta with dried fig salami,” which knocked my socks off it was so good. I will remember it for a long time.

As we were finishing up, Lisa had the idea that we should leave a This Box is for Good box behind, and while we debated simply leaving it on the table, we decided instead to present it to Federica on the way out.

It was clear that the gesture touched her, and so it touched us. It was also clear that she understood the “refill and pass along” conceit immediately.

A story that started with one box, ended with another.

This box really is for good.

We’re posted up 50 m from the Adriatic, in Numana.

About 280 km across the water in Croatia is where my grandfather was born.

It is warm and, at least today, gloriously sunny.

Since she came out three years ago today, Olivia’s declared May 7th her second birthday. I’m not there to celebrate it with her this year, though she has plenty of people who love her who are there. From afar, I remain enormously proud of her. I love you, Olivia.

Winnie Lim quotes Salman Rushdie, from The Ground Beneath Her Feet:

Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter’s tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.

Reading this, I realize that I’ve spent the four years since my father and Catherine died in succession missing this point: no matter the nature of our relationships, they formed part of my definition of myself, through their own construction of who and how I was.

When they disappeared, I lost that buttress.

It’s both freeing and destabilizing.

While walking through the village of Spello, we just now witnessed a most archetypal Italian scene: a well-dressed man driving an antique Fiat 500 pulled up in front of a perfume store we were standing in front of, rolled down his passenger side window, and shouted to the proprietor; when she came out, he handed her a box of flower petals, and then drove off.

Two nights in a row Lisa and I have been able to steal away for a drink before supper. Last night it was to Bar Jolly here in Gubbio. I took the opportunity to sketch the disused Post-Telegrafi office across the street.