Alphabet Challenge: I

I’ve signed onto The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge 2021.

The challenge is to blog the whole alphabet in April and write at least 100 words on a topic that corresponds to the letter of the day. 

Every day, excluding Sundays, I’m blogging about Places I Have Been. The last post will be on Friday, April 30 when I finally focus on the letter Z. 

I: Italy

I retired on September 17, 2004. On October 7^th,  my husband, Ernie, and I left for Italy. We joined a tour with another couple, long time friends, exploring Palermo, Rome, Naples and Venice. The final week we rented a car and a villa in Tuscany. A vacation I had dreamed about for years.

Memories:

• Enjoying breakfast of Italian bread with butter and orange marmalade, tea and fresh pears (when we didn’t visit the café for cappuccino and pastry) 
• Taking day trips to Siena, Assisi, Montalcino, and near-by villages 
• Stopping  spontaneously at the roadside churches with varied facades and weathered pews  
• Dining in the one restaurant in the village where we savored ribollita soup and wild boar
• Drinking bottles of fabulous Italian wine
• Watching the green hills and valleys from the living room window while sipping Limoncello in the late afternoon
• Calling family back in the States from the public phone in the café while groups of Italian men smoked and played cards near-by, drowning out our conversations 
• Watching the Italian laborers nearby setting up a hot plate to boil water for their spaghetti lunch 
• Cooking dinner with meats, fish, vegetables and bread from the local markets
• Loving the slow-paced life, leisurely dinners and magnificent sunsets 

Most of all these memories have, over the years, kept my husband and me connected to our friends who journeyed Italy along with us.