My Travel Log
Frank Sinatra singing Come Fly With Me is running on a loop through my mind. I can’t banish him – and I don’t know that I want to, really.
It is pouring with rain outside; the water slithering in sheets down the glass, rumpling up like mussed-up bed linen as one wave of water gets overtaken by the next. It’s cold out there. So I’ll stay here for a moment with my travel log.
My friend, Stella, bought it for me. It’s a handy little book that slips easily into a jacket pocket.
There are plastic sleeves for rail tickets and photographs, and a little zipped bag which is perfect for a pressed flower or two. And lots of lined pages for writing down what I’ve seen, where I’ve been, what I’ve eaten, what wine I like the best, and how it all makes me feel.There’s even a stubby little pen in a glorious shade of blue attached to it by a chain.
I love getting my travel log out on days like this and flipping through.
There’s a cup of tea on the table beside me but I expect it will go cold because I always get carried away looking through the log.
Ah, here’s Siena.“Everyone knows about the world’s craziest horse race on the cobbles of the Palio. But to witness it is to be awed at the bravery of the riders.”
There is lots more about the ancient bathing pools of Siena, used longer than history can recount.And pages on art almost too beautiful to be able to find words for – sculptures, paintings in all media, frescoes, pottery, and fabulous jewellery made out of precious metals.
I run my finger over the page and it’s as though I am there.
I flip through the pages and, as I do so, Frank Sinatra is replaced in my head by Alfie Boe’s fabulous tenor voice – who could forget him as Jean Valjean in Les Mis? Alfie’s middle names are Giovanni Roncalli so how could he not be able to sing!
Ah, a train ticket. How strange to buy a ticket and then have to authenticate it at a little box on the concourse before you can get on the train. But that’s what travellers have to do in Italy. Chiusi-Chianciano T – Siena. Andback again. Prezzo – price 10 euros.
And one to Roma Termini a little more expensive at 12.50 euros. Cheap at the price, a very decent cup of espresso in my hand, to sit gazing out as the landscape changes from the rolling hills of Tuscany, full of butterflies rising from flowers and the roads that it seems wind upwards to the sky, into vineyards and then the outskirts of what is, arguably, the most romantic city in the world.Well, it was for Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday, and so it is for me.
Who can go to Rome and not eat a gelato bought from a van parked in the middle of a piazza, served by a handsome Italian, who sings while he serves?
“Gelato. Fragola. Per favore!” It sounds almost musical, asking for a strawberry ice cream in Italian. And then when the ice cream has been finished and the drips licked from my fingers, a sorbet. “Sorbetto limone. Grazie.” Who knows when I’ll pass this way again – so a photo of me eating both – not at the same time!
It’s hot in Italy in August. So very hot. Ice cream and sorbets melt quickly in this heat. I know I ought to wear a hat but it is good to feel the sun directly on my skin – especially on the shoulders, I read somewhere, because it builds up vitamin D stores for the greyer, grimmer months.
We can all do with some of that.And a strappy dress to do it all in. Cotton. I always buy one new sundress for a holiday, and here’s the one that says Italy – almost 1950s in style with wide shoulder straps, a scoop neck and nipped-in waist.Think Sophia Loren in just about any film she’s ever been in.
Plenty of material in the skirt, which swishes against my calves when I move. Floral.“Just like a bunch of blooming hydrangeas!” Stella laughed when she saw it. “Well, why not?” I told her. There are – this being a travel log of Italy – lots of photographs of tables set with deliciouslooking plates of food.
Risotto ai cavolfiori. Only the Italians could marry the humble cauliflower – so hated from memories of school dinners – with anchovies and chillies and rice, and turn it into food for the gods, I think.
And the desserts – well! You should see what they do with rice pudding in a semifreddo con cioccolato e riso.Yum! I’m feeling hungry just looking at it all.
And there’s wine, of course. It’s said that the best wine never leaves Italy – never gets exported. How eminently sensible, I think. Chianti is my favourite red. But, oh, so many whites from which to choose that aren’t on the supermarket shelves at home.
Ah, another photograph. Just after dawn in the Chianti area. The hills weave together in various shades of grey, cypress trees standing tall on the right of the photograph, and a hill with a castello piercing the sky, the clouds looking like hills themselves. It could almost be a black and white photograph, but isn’t.
That’s Italy – a country full of delights for the eyes, the stomach, the mind, the soul.
“All done, Maggie,” my oncology nurse says as she unhooks me from the drip and hauls me back to the present. “Last one.”
And then, hopefully, I’ll be in remission.And I can take out all the things I’ve printed off the internet and cut out from magazines and I can fill my travel log for real.
I have to believe that. Besides, Frank Sinatra is still singing Come Fly With Me.
And I will.
Italy, a country of delights for the eyes, the mind and soul